doug-hauptman

The 3-Tool Time Management System That Actually Works

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 15:07:21 GMT

Ever notice how most productivity advice feels like it was written for robots? "Wake up at 4 AM, meditate for two hours, answer all emails in exactly 30 minutes..." Yeah, right.

Let me share a time management system that's built for actual humans. It's the approach I've refined over years of juggling meetings, tasks, and yes, even finding time for golf. The beauty of this system is that it uses just three common tools, but combines them in a way that covers all your bases.

Google Calendar: Your Time Blocking Home Base

The foundation of this system is good old Google Calendar, but we're not using it like most people do. Instead of just plugging in meetings and hoping for the best, I block off specific times for different activities.

Think of your calendar as prime real estate. Every block should have a purpose - whether that's focused work time, virtual meetings, or yes, even that morning yoga session you keep promising yourself you'll start. The key is being realistic about what you can accomplish.

Here's how I plan it:

Weekly view for the immediate fire-fighting
Monthly check-ins to look at the next quarter
Regular reviews of the full year (because nobody wants to schedule a crucial meeting during their beach vacation)

Google Tasks: Your Personal Task Command Center

This is where the rubber meets the road. Google Tasks is like your personal assistant who never sleeps - keeping track of all those "I should probably do this" moments that pop up throughout the day.

The magic happens when you align these tasks with your calendar blocks. Working on leasing during your 2-4 PM block? Perfect - tackle all the leasing-related tasks you've been collecting. It's satisfying to watch them disappear one by one.

The recurring task feature is a game-changer here. Set it once, and let the system remind you about those weekly reports or monthly reviews. Your brain has better things to do than remember when the quarterly budget meeting is due.

Basecamp: Where Team Tasks Live

Here's where most time management systems fall apart - they forget that we don't work in a vacuum. Enter Basecamp, the team collaboration tool that keeps group projects from descending into chaos.

While Google Calendar and Tasks are great for personal productivity, they're not built for team coordination. Basecamp fills this gap, creating a separate space where team projects can live and breathe without cluttering your personal system.

Why This Three-Tool System Works

The beauty of this approach is that each tool has its lane and stays in it. Calendar handles time allocation, Tasks manages personal to-dos, and Basecamp corrals team projects. No more wondering "Wait, where did I put that thing I need to do?"

It's also flexible enough to evolve with you. Start with the basic framework, then adjust the blocks and systems as you learn what works best for your style. Maybe you'll find you need more buffer time between meetings, or perhaps you'll discover you're most productive in the afternoons. The system adapts to you, not the other way around.

Making It Your Own

The key to any productivity system is consistency, not perfection. Start with these three tools and experiment. Maybe you'll find that daily planning works better than weekly for you. Or perhaps you'll discover that blocking off "no meeting" days helps you stay sane.

The goal isn't to become a productivity robot - it's to create a system that helps you manage your time without managing your life to death. Because at the end of the day, the best time management system is the one you'll actually use.

Remember: This system is meant to give you more control over your time, not less. If it ever feels like it's running your life instead of supporting it, that's your cue to adjust and adapt. After all, time management should help you find more time for what matters - even if that's just sneaking in nine holes on a Wednesday afternoon.

Bonus Video: More On Basecamp

Why $49 Could Be Your Smartest Business Investment This Year

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:22:25 GMT

Look, I'm going to be straight with you. Most AI marketing tools are expensive.

Look, I'm going to be straight with you. Most AI marketing tools are expensive. Jasper starts at $39/user/month just for basic features. Other platforms charge up to $99/month for their premium tiers. And that's before you factor in all the separate tools you need for different tasks.

That's what makes American Marketing Company Marketing Tools different. At $49/month, you're getting an entire marketing department in your pocket. Not just one tool. Not just a few features. Everything.

Let's break down what that $49 actually buys you:

A full AI content creation suite that would normally cost $40-60/month on its own
Email marketing automation that typically runs $30-50/month elsewhere
Social media management tools that usually cost $25-35/month
SEO optimization features that other companies charge $50+/month for
Analytics and reporting that could easily set you back $30-40/month

Add that up, and you're looking at $175-235 worth of marketing tools. For $49.

But here's the real kicker: According to recent market analysis, businesses using AI marketing tools are seeing an average ROI increase of 37%. Think about that. If you're making $5,000 a month now, that's potentially an extra $1,850 in your pocket. From a $49 investment.

"But I can just use free tools," you might be thinking. Sure, you could. You could also cut your own hair, change your own oil, and do your own taxes. But at some point, you have to ask yourself: What's your time worth?

The average small business owner spends 20 hours per month on marketing tasks. With American Marketing Company Marketing Tools , our users report cutting that down to 5 hours. At even a modest $50/hour valuation of your time, that's $750 worth of time saved every month.

Here's what makes this offer different:

No contracts
No hidden fees
No "premium" features locked behind higher tiers
No per-user pricing that suddenly triples your costs
No complex onboarding process

Just $49/month for everything. That's less than what most businesses spend on coffee for the office in a week .

And unlike other platforms that make you pay extra for AI features, which can drive costs up significantly for small businesses , everything at American Marketing Company Marketing Tools is powered by AI from the ground up.

Think about it this way: $49 is:

Less than one tank of gas
Less than a decent dinner for two
Less than most monthly phone bills
Less than what most competing tools charge for just one feature

But unlike those expenses, this $49 is an investment that pays for itself. Often in the first week.

Here's my challenge to you: Try it for one month. That's all. If you don't see at least a 2x return on that $49 investment, I'll be shocked. With the AI marketing industry growing by 38% in 2025, can you really afford to wait?

The catch? There isn't one. But there is a reality: As AI technology costs rise, this $49 price point won't last forever. Lock it in now.

Ready to stop wasting time and start growing your business? Visit American Marketing Company Marketing Tools and click "Subscribe." Your future self will thank you.

P.S. Still on the fence? Remember this: While you're reading this, your competitors are probably already using these tools. The question isn't whether to embrace AI marketing - it's whether you'll do it before or after them.

Peace - Love - Happiness

~doug h

The Accuser's Mirror: A Psychological Profile of Projection in Relationships

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 22:53:45 GMT

The Accuser's Mirror - A Self-help Article by Hyper-AI & Douglas Hauptman

When someone consistently accuses their spouse of infidelity despite no recent or real evidence of cheating, we're often looking at a complex psychological framework built on deep-seated insecurities and past wounds. Let's examine the psychological makeup of such an accuser.

At the core of these accusations lies an intricate web of attachment issues, typically rooted in childhood experiences. The accuser often grew up in an environment where trust was broken repeatedly – perhaps by witnessing parental infidelity, experiencing abandonment, or dealing with unreliable caregivers. These early experiences created a template for future relationships: expect betrayal before it happens.

The brain of a chronic accuser operates on high alert, similar to someone with post-traumatic stress disorder. Every late night at work, every friendly conversation with a colleague, every slight delay in responding to texts becomes potential evidence of infidelity. This hypervigilance stems from an overactive threat-detection system, where the brain has learned to scan constantly for signs of abandonment or betrayal.

Interestingly, these accusations often serve as a self-protective mechanism. By maintaining a state of suspicion, the accuser creates an emotional shield – if they expect betrayal, they believe they can't be caught off guard by it. This defensive posture might feel safer than vulnerability, but it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: their behavior pushes away the very person they're desperate to keep close.

The accuser's thinking patterns typically show several cognitive distortions. They engage in black-and-white thinking, where small actions are categorized as either absolute loyalty or complete betrayal, with no middle ground. They also demonstrate mind reading, assuming they know their partner's thoughts and motivations without evidence. Confirmation bias plays a significant role – they seek out information that confirms their suspicions while dismissing evidence of faithfulness.

Below this surface behavior often lurks profound self-esteem issues. The constant accusations might really be saying, "I don't believe I'm worthy of faithful love." This self-doubt can manifest as projection – if they have thoughts about infidelity or struggle with loyalty themselves, they might project these feelings onto their partner, finding it easier to locate these threatening feelings in someone else rather than confronting them within themselves.

The accuser's relationship history typically shows a pattern of turbulent connections. Previous relationships likely ended due to similar trust issues, yet they often blame these failures entirely on their former partners. This pattern reveals an inability to engage in healthy self-reflection or take responsibility for their role in relationship dynamics.

Control becomes a central theme in their behavioral repertoire. The accusations serve as a tool for controlling their partner's behavior – where they go, who they talk to, how they spend their time. This control temporarily soothes their anxiety but ultimately creates a pressure cooker environment in the relationship.

Perhaps most revealing is their response to reassurance. When their partner provides evidence of faithfulness or offers genuine reassurance, the accuser might experience temporary relief, but it's quickly replaced by new doubts. This pattern suggests that the real issue isn't about gathering enough evidence of loyalty – it's about an inability to trust even when evidence is abundant.

The accuser's emotional landscape is dominated by fear, shame, and anger. Fear of abandonment drives their vigilance, shame about their insecurities fuels their defensive behavior, and anger – both at themselves and their partner – creates a constant state of emotional arousal that makes rational thinking difficult.

Their communication style often involves subtle manipulation tactics: guilt-tripping, emotional withdrawal, or explosive confrontations. These behaviors serve to keep their partner off-balance and defensive, creating a dynamic where the partner constantly tries to prove their innocence rather than addressing the underlying trust issues.

Without intervention, this pattern typically escalates. The accuser's behavior can become increasingly controlling and obsessive, sometimes leading to monitoring their partner's phone, following them, or demanding constant updates about their whereabouts. This surveillance behavior provides short-term relief but further damages the relationship's foundation.

Recovery from this pattern requires deep therapeutic work. The accuser needs to confront their attachment wounds, develop healthier coping mechanisms, and learn to tolerate the inherent vulnerability that comes with loving someone. Until they address these core issues, they're likely to repeat this pattern, either in their current relationship or in future ones.

The accused partner in this dynamic faces their own psychological challenges, often experiencing what psychologists term "walking on eggshells syndrome." This constant state of defensive alertness creates a profound shift in their personality and emotional well-being over time.

Initially, many accused partners respond with patience and understanding, offering reassurance and transparency in an attempt to alleviate their partner's fears. They might freely share passwords, check in frequently, and adjust their social behaviors to avoid triggering accusations. However, this accommodation gradually erodes their sense of autonomy and personal boundaries.

The psychological toll on the accused manifests in various ways. They often experience heightened anxiety, depression, and a diminished sense of self-worth. Their mental energy becomes consumed by the need to document their whereabouts, explain innocent interactions, and defend against accusations, leading to cognitive exhaustion and decreased performance in other life areas.

A particularly insidious effect is the phenomenon of "induced doubt," where the accused partner begins to question their own reality. The constant barrage of accusations can create a form of gaslighting effect – even though they know they're faithful, they start doubting their own behaviors and intentions. Did that friendly conversation with a coworker cross a line? Was that social media like inappropriate? This self-questioning can lead to a fragmentation of their identity and social withdrawal.

The accused partner often develops their own maladaptive coping mechanisms. Some become hypervigilant about their own behavior, essentially internalizing their partner's surveillance. Others might react with increasing defensiveness or hostility, while some retreat into emotional numbness as a form of self-protection. These responses, while understandable, further deteriorate the relationship's emotional foundation.

Perhaps most concerning is the gradual erosion of the accused partner's support system. Fearing their interactions might trigger accusations, they often distance themselves from friends and family, leading to social isolation. This withdrawal removes crucial external perspectives and emotional support, making it harder to maintain a balanced view of the situation or seek help when needed.

The relationship itself becomes a complex system of mutual reinforcement, where both partners' coping mechanisms interact to create increasingly dysfunctional patterns. This dynamic often follows a predictable cycle that mental health professionals have termed the "accusation-defense spiral."

In this spiral, the accuser's hypervigilance leads to questioning, which prompts defensive responses from their partner. These defensive responses, even when completely justified, often trigger more suspicion in the accuser's mind – "Why are they so defensive if they have nothing to hide?" This creates a feedback loop where each partner's natural responses intensify the other's problematic behaviors.

The relationship gradually loses its capacity for joy and spontaneity. Simple pleasures like social gatherings, work events, or even casual conversations with others become potential minefields. The couple's emotional energy becomes so focused on managing accusations and defenses that little remains for nurturing the positive aspects of their connection.

Breaking this cycle requires a multi-faceted therapeutic approach. Individual therapy for both partners is often essential – the accuser needs to address their underlying attachment trauma and develop healthier coping mechanisms, while the accused partner requires support in rebuilding their sense of self and establishing healthy boundaries. Couples therapy can then serve as a bridge, helping both partners understand their roles in the dynamic and develop new patterns of interaction.

Success in treatment often depends on both partners' willingness to examine their roles without becoming defensive. The accuser must confront the painful reality that their protective mechanisms are actually causing harm, while the accused partner needs to understand how their accommodating behaviors, though well-intentioned, may enable the dysfunction to continue.

Recovery typically progresses through distinct stages. The first involves creating safety and stability, often through clear boundaries and communication guidelines. The second focuses on processing underlying traumas and developing new coping skills. The final stage involves rebuilding trust and intimacy, but with new awareness and healthier patterns of interaction.

For some couples, this work leads to a stronger, more secure relationship. The process of addressing these issues can create deeper understanding and more authentic connection. However, others may discover that the healthiest path forward is separation, particularly if one partner is unwilling to engage in the necessary therapeutic work.

Effective therapeutic intervention for accusatory relationship patterns requires a carefully structured approach combining multiple evidence-based techniques. Here's an examination of specific interventions that have shown promise in addressing these complex dynamics.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) serves as a foundational approach, particularly for the accusing partner. The therapist helps identify triggering situations and the automatic thoughts that follow – for instance, "My partner is working late again, they must be cheating." Through thought recording exercises, the accuser learns to recognize these cognitive distortions and develop more balanced interpretations. They might reframe the thought to, "Working late is a normal part of their job, and they've always been transparent about their schedule."

Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on healing early wounds that fuel the accusatory behavior. This approach often employs the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) to understand the accuser's attachment style and its origins. Therapeutic techniques might include inner child work, where the accuser dialogues with their younger self to address unmet needs and fears of abandonment. This process helps separate past trauma responses from present relationship dynamics.

For the accused partner, Trauma-Focused Therapy often proves beneficial, as living under constant suspicion can create its own form of trauma. Techniques like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) help process the emotional impact of chronic accusations and restore a sense of personal agency. Boundary-setting exercises and assertiveness training help rebuild their eroded sense of self.

In couples work, the Gottman Method offers specific tools for rebuilding trust and communication. The "Stress-Reducing Conversation" technique creates a daily ritual where partners discuss their stresses without problem-solving, fostering empathy and connection. "State of the Union" meetings provide a structured format for addressing concerns without triggering defensive reactions.

Mindfulness-based interventions help both partners develop awareness of their emotional triggers and physiological responses. The accuser learns to recognize the bodily sensations that precede accusatory thoughts, while the accused partner identifies signs of emotional overwhelm. Simple techniques like the "STOP" method (Stop, Take a breath, Observe, Proceed mindfully) help interrupt escalating cycles.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) techniques, adapted from anxiety treatment, can help the accusing partner tolerate uncertainty. Graduated exposure to trigger situations – like their partner attending social events alone – paired with prevention of checking behaviors, helps build distress tolerance. This work requires careful calibration and strong therapeutic support to avoid overwhelming either partner.

Role-playing exercises in therapy allow couples to practice new communication patterns in a safe environment. The therapist might guide them through "accusation scenarios," teaching the accuser to express fears without making accusations, while the accused partner learns to respond with empathy while maintaining healthy boundaries. These exercises often incorporate "time-out" protocols for when emotions become too intense.

Written exercises play a crucial role in the healing process. Therapeutic journaling helps both partners process their experiences outside of sessions. The accuser might maintain a "reality-testing log" documenting the gap between their fears and actual events, while the accused partner uses writing to reconnect with their authentic self and process suppressed emotions.

Long-term maintenance of healthy relationship patterns requires vigilant attention to potential relapse triggers and the implementation of robust prevention strategies. This phase of recovery focuses on solidifying therapeutic gains while preparing couples for future challenges.

The foundation of successful maintenance lies in what therapists call the "Early Warning System." Both partners learn to identify subtle signs that old patterns are re-emerging. For the accusing partner, these might include increased checking behaviors, intrusive thoughts about infidelity, or physical symptoms of anxiety. The accused partner might notice themselves beginning to self-censor or experiencing renewed hypervigilance about their actions.

Successful couples develop personalized "Relationship Maintenance Plans" that outline specific strategies for different risk levels. These plans typically include:

Level 1 (Daily Maintenance):

Regular check-ins using structured communication techniques
Consistent practice of mindfulness exercises
Maintaining separate interests and healthy boundaries
Ongoing journaling to track emotional patterns
Regular engagement in shared positive activities

Level 2 (Yellow Flags):

Implementation of time-out protocols when tensions rise
Increased use of cognitive restructuring techniques
Return to basic grounding exercises
Activation of support networks
Review of therapy notes and coping strategies

Level 3 (Red Flags):

Immediate contact with their therapist
Return to more intensive therapeutic support
Implementation of crisis communication protocols
Temporary return to structured interaction guidelines
Increased frequency of support group attendance

A crucial aspect of maintenance involves "Stress Inoculation Training," where couples deliberately expose themselves to mild triggering situations under controlled conditions. This might include practicing healthy responses to common triggers like work-related travel, social media interactions, or delayed text responses. These exercises help build resilience and confidence in their new coping mechanisms.

The concept of "Relationship Resilience" becomes central during this phase. Couples learn that occasional setbacks don't indicate failure but rather provide opportunities for reinforcing their recovery skills. They develop what therapists term "emotional muscle memory" – the ability to automatically implement healthy responses to challenging situations.

Support systems play a vital role in maintenance. Successful couples often participate in ongoing support groups or maintenance therapy sessions, viewing these as relationship wellness check-ups rather than crisis interventions. Some find that serving as mentors to other couples working through similar issues helps reinforce their own recovery.

Technology can be repurposed from a source of conflict to a maintenance tool. Couples might use relationship apps that promote healthy communication or set up regular virtual check-ins with their therapist. However, clear boundaries around technology use remain essential to prevent slipping back into monitoring behaviors.

Perhaps most importantly, couples learn to celebrate their progress while remaining realistic about ongoing challenges. They understand that maintaining relationship health requires active engagement, much like physical fitness requires regular exercise. This mindset shift from "fixing a problem" to "maintaining relationship wellness" proves crucial for long-term success.

Long-term studies of couples who have navigated through accusatory relationship patterns reveal diverse outcomes that can inform both therapeutic approaches and prognosis. Understanding these trajectories helps set realistic expectations and guides intervention strategies.

Research indicates three primary long-term outcome patterns. The first group, approximately 30% of couples, achieves what therapists term "transformed intimacy" – a deeper, more authentic connection built on the foundation of their recovery work. These couples often report that working through their trust issues created unprecedented emotional intimacy and self-awareness. Their relationships become characterized by earned security rather than anxious attachment.

The second group, roughly 45%, maintains stability through ongoing management. These couples successfully implement their maintenance strategies but require periodic therapeutic tune-ups. Their relationships remain functional and satisfying, though they may experience occasional resurgences of old patterns during high-stress periods. The key distinction is their ability to recognize and address these patterns before they escalate.

The final group, about 25%, ultimately transitions to new relationships or chosen singlehood. Importantly, research suggests that even these "unsuccessful" couples often report personal growth and improved relationship skills in their subsequent relationships, particularly when both partners engaged meaningfully in the therapeutic process.

Looking beyond the immediate relationship, the implications of successful recovery extend into multiple life domains. Professional performance often improves as mental energy previously consumed by relationship anxiety becomes available for career focus. Social relationships deepen as both partners develop healthier boundaries and interaction patterns. Many couples report improved parenting capacity, breaking intergenerational patterns of insecure attachment.

The neurobiological impact of successful treatment appears lasting. Brain imaging studies of recovered accusers show normalized activity in areas associated with threat detection and emotional regulation. This suggests that with proper intervention, even deeply ingrained patterns of hypervigilance can be permanently altered.

Perhaps most significantly, couples who successfully navigate this journey often become valuable resources for others facing similar challenges. Many choose to participate in peer support programs or share their experiences in therapeutic groups, creating a ripple effect of healing in their communities. Their stories serve as powerful testimonials that change is possible, even in seemingly entrenched patterns of mistrust.

The future of treatment for accusatory relationships continues to evolve, with promising developments in areas like neurofeedback therapy and virtual reality exposure training. However, the fundamental principles remain consistent: healing requires courage, commitment, and the willingness to confront deep-seated patterns while building new ones.

As we understand more about the intersection of attachment theory, neurobiology, and relationship dynamics, one truth becomes increasingly clear: while the path to recovery from accusatory patterns is challenging, it offers an opportunity for profound personal and relational transformation. The journey itself, regardless of its ultimate destination, can serve as a catalyst for meaningful growth and self-discovery.

The Difference Between Helping and Performative Helping

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:13:22 GMT

The Virtue Signal - A Novel by Hyper-AI & Douglas Hauptman

Chapter 1: The Performance

Sarah Mitchell considered herself one of the good ones. At thirty-two, she'd attended every diversity workshop her tech company offered, had a "Black Lives Matter" sticker on her laptop, and wasn't afraid to call out racism wherever she saw it — which, as it happened, was everywhere.

The problem was, Sarah saw racism in places where it didn't exist. Like when her colleague James suggested that maybe — just maybe — the office's mandatory "Unconscious Bias" training wasn't the best use of company time. Sarah immediately reported him to HR for creating a hostile work environment.

Or when her neighbor Tom put up a "Blue Lives Matter" flag. She didn't just write a strongly-worded letter to the HOA; she started a neighborhood petition to have him removed from the community. The fact that Tom's son was a police officer who'd died in the line of duty was, in Sarah's mind, irrelevant. Symbols were symbols, after all.

But Sarah's moment of reckoning came during the company's annual diversity gala. As she stood at the podium, ready to accept an award for her "outstanding contributions to workplace inclusion," an elderly Black janitor shuffled past with his mop. Sarah, caught up in her performative zeal, stopped her speech to publicly praise him for his "brave presence in predominantly white spaces."

The janitor, Mr. Johnson, who held two master's degrees and worked nights to put his grandchildren through college, simply stared at her. The silence in the room was deafening.

It was then that Sarah began to realize that perhaps she, in her desperate attempt to prove her anti-racist credentials, had become something else entirely: a caricature of white liberal guilt, so focused on appearing virtuous that she'd lost sight of actual human beings.

But would she recognize this truth about herself? Or would she double down, convinced that her crusade against perceived racism made her one of the "good ones"?

After all, nothing was more important to Sarah than being seen as one of the good ones. Even if it meant destroying other people's lives in the process.

Sarah's phone buzzed. Another notification from her carefully curated social justice Twitter feed. Someone had posted about a local Thai restaurant owned by a white couple. Her fingers itched with righteous purpose as she began drafting her callout post.

"Time to educate some colonizers," she muttered, completely missing the irony of her white savior complex in action. She had a fresh thread brewing about cultural appropriation in the culinary arts, complete with her usual hashtags: #CulturalViolence #NotYourFood #CancelColonizers.

The fact that she'd never actually eaten at the restaurant, or spoken to its owners, or learned anything about their background, was irrelevant. She had a cause to fight for, and more importantly, an audience to perform for.

Her laptop screen reflected her satisfied smile as she hit "Tweet." Another blow struck in the name of justice. Another performance completed.

In the building's lobby, Mr. Johnson quietly mopped the floor, his MIT class ring catching the fluorescent light as he moved. He'd watched people like Sarah come and go over his decades of working nights to fund his grandchildren's education. They never asked about his dissertation on economic empowerment in urban communities, or his years running a successful consulting firm before the 2008 crash.

They just saw what they wanted to see: a prop in their performance of virtue.

Mr. Johnson smiled slightly, knowing something Sarah didn't: real change happened in the quiet moments between the performances, in the authentic connections made when nobody was watching, in the humble act of seeing people as they were – not as characters in your own story of redemption.

But Sarah wasn't ready for that lesson yet. She was too busy composing her next thread about why white people shouldn't be allowed to use chopsticks.

The spotlight was on, and she had a show to run.

Chapter 2: The Awakening

Sarah's Instagram feed was her battlefield. Every morning, she'd scroll through her carefully curated list of "anti-racist educators," taking detailed notes on the latest terminology and transgressions to avoid. Her followers had come to expect her daily callouts of problematic behavior, accompanied by lengthy captions explaining why seemingly innocent actions were actually "deeply rooted in white supremacy."

Today's target was the local farmer's market.

"Just witnessed a white vendor selling KIMCHI," she typed furiously. "This is literally colonization on a plate. I immediately spoke to the manager about this gross example of cultural appropriation."

What Sarah hadn't bothered to learn was that the vendor, Amy Chen, was Korean-American, using her grandmother's recipe. Amy had been wearing a sun hat and face mask while tending her stall, making her ethnicity not immediately apparent. But Sarah hadn't asked. Asking would have ruined a perfectly good opportunity for outrage.

The backlash was swift. Amy's regular customers came to her defense, and soon Sarah's inbox was flooded with messages explaining her mistake. But Sarah wasn't interested in correction. Instead, she doubled down, writing a three-part series about how her critics were exhibiting "white fragility" and "defending systems of oppression."

That evening, during her weekly video call with her sister Kate, Sarah proudly recounted her day of activism.

"Don't you think you should apologize to the vendor?" Kate asked carefully.

"God, Kate, you sound just like Mom," Sarah snapped. "This is exactly why I had to distance myself from our family. You're all so... problematic."

Kate sighed. Their mother — a retired civil rights lawyer who'd spent forty years defending low-income clients of all backgrounds — had become Sarah's favorite example of "outdated thinking" ever since she'd suggested that perhaps screaming "racist" at their elderly neighbor for mispronouncing a name wasn't the most constructive approach.

"Sarah," Kate said, "do you remember Ms. Washington from third grade?"

"Our Black teacher? Of course. She was so brave to work in our predominantly white school."

"She wasn't brave, Sarah. She was just a teacher doing her job. And she hated being called 'brave' for simply existing in white spaces. She told us that directly, remember?"

Sarah didn't remember. Or rather, she'd rewritten that memory to better fit her current narrative.

The conversation ended abruptly when Sarah spotted a Facebook post she deemed problematic — a white woman sharing a recipe for tacos. "Sorry, Kate, duty calls. This cultural theft needs to be addressed."

As she began typing another righteously indignant post, Sarah caught her reflection in the computer screen. For a brief moment, she saw something in her eyes that made her pause: a glimpse of emptiness, a hunger for validation that no amount of virtual signaling could fill.

But then the moment passed, and she returned to her crusade. After all, someone had to protect the world from the scourge of white people making tacos.

Meanwhile, across town, Amy Chen added another name to her growing list of banned customers, turned up her K-pop playlist, and continued fermenting her grandmother's kimchi — the same way her family had done for generations, regardless of who approved or disapproved of their right to do so.

Chapter 3: The Committee

Sarah's greatest triumph — or so she thought — was founding her company's "Coalition for Radical Inclusion and Social Justice" (CRISJ, which she insisted on pronouncing as "crisis"). Every Tuesday, the committee would meet in Conference Room B to discuss ways to make their workplace more equitable.

Today's meeting was particularly energetic. Sarah had discovered that the company's cafeteria was serving "ethnic food Fridays."

"It's exotification of minority cuisines," she declared to the room of predominantly white faces she'd personally selected for the committee. "And the worst part? They're letting Chef Marcus, who is literally a white male, cook these dishes!"

Maria, one of only two people of color on the committee, cleared her throat. "Actually, Marcus trained in Thailand for ten years, and his wife is Thai—"

"That's literally worse," Sarah interrupted, making a note to schedule a private conversation with Maria about her "internalized oppression." "He's basically colonizing his wife's culture for profit."

The committee members nodded dutifully, except for James from Accounting, who'd only joined because HR strongly suggested it would help with his "documented insensitivity" — namely, the time he'd questioned Sarah's anonymous complaint about the office Christmas party being "religious terrorism."

"What if we just asked the staff what they think about the menu?" James suggested.

Sarah's eyes narrowed. "That would be putting the burden of education on marginalized people, James. Do better." She made another note to report this microaggression to HR.

After the meeting, Sarah headed to her favorite coffee shop, The Woke Bean, where she regularly lectured the baristas about their tip jar being a symbol of capitalism's exploitation. As she waited for her order ("fair trade, ethically sourced, oat milk cortado with a trigger warning"), she overheard two elderly Asian women chatting at a nearby table.

"Did you hear they're canceling ethnic food at TechCorp?" one said. "My daughter Jin works there.

She said some white lady decided it was offensive."

"Typical," her friend replied. "They think they're helping, but they're just erasing us. Jin said that Marcus's pad thai was the only thing that reminded her of her grandmother's cooking."

Sarah felt a strange discomfort in her stomach. But she quickly diagnosed it as a reaction to systemic oppression rather than any sort of self-doubt. Opening her laptop, she began drafting an email to the entire company about the importance of "decolonizing lunch."

That's when she noticed a new employee standing by her table — Dr. Yuki Chen, the company's recently hired VP of Innovation. Sarah immediately straightened up, ready to demonstrate her allyship.

"Dr. Chen! I just want you to know that I see you, and I honor your brave journey as an Asian woman in tech. I'm actually leading the charge to remove the problematic ethnic food program that's been oppressing our marginalized employees."

Dr. Chen's expression was unreadable behind her mask, but her voice was crystal clear: "Ms. Mitchell, I'm the one who started the ethnic food program. And Marcus is my brother-in-law."

For the first time in years, Sarah was speechless.

"Also," Dr. Chen continued, "I've been meaning to talk to you about some complaints I've received about CRISJ. Would you mind joining me in my office tomorrow morning?"

As Dr. Chen walked away, Sarah frantically opened Slack to message her committee. They needed to organize a protest immediately. Clearly, Dr. Chen was suffering from internalized white supremacy, and it was Sarah's duty — her burden, really — to save her from herself.

After all, what could an actual Asian executive possibly know about diversity that Sarah hadn't already learned from her Instagram activism course?

Chapter 4: The Reckoning

Sarah arrived at Dr. Chen's office armed with screenshots of anti-racist infographics and a 47-page document titled "Decolonizing Corporate Cuisine: A White Ally's Guide to Food Justice." She'd stayed up until 3 AM preparing her defense, fueled by organic coffee and the conviction that she was on the right side of history.

Dr. Chen's office was disappointingly conventional. Sarah had expected at least a few "Asian-inspired" decorative elements she could mentally catalog as problematic. Instead, she found herself sitting across from a simple desk with a family photo — Marcus, the cafeteria chef, was indeed in the picture, arm around his wife at what appeared to be Dr. Chen's graduation.

"Ms. Mitchell," Dr. Chen began, adjusting her glasses, "I've reviewed the activities of your... committee." She glanced at a folder. "CRISJ?"

"Yes," Sarah leaned forward eagerly. "We're working to dismantle systemic—"

"In the past month," Dr. Chen continued as if Sarah hadn't spoken, "you've filed thirty-seven HR complaints, organized a boycott of the company gym for offering 'culturally appropriative' yoga classes, and demanded the removal of the Spanish language option from our software because, according to your email, 'white developers shouldn't profit from other languages.'"

"Exactly!" Sarah beamed. "I'm so glad you understand—"

"Our yoga instructor is Hindu, Ms. Mitchell. She's been teaching for twenty years. She quit last week after your followers left one-star reviews on her personal business page."

"Well, she should have understood that as a white-passing person—"

"She's not 'white-passing.' That's just what she looks like. And she's filed a harassment claim."

Sarah felt a familiar rush of righteous indignation. "This is exactly the kind of tone policing that—"

"I'm not finished," Dr. Chen's voice had a steel edge to it. "The Spanish language option was developed by our Latin American team in Mexico City. They were quite confused by your email accusing them of 'letting themselves be colonized.'"

Sarah's phone buzzed. Probably another Instagram notification from her latest post about "decentering whiteness in corporate spaces." Dr. Chen reached over and turned the phone face-down.

"But let's talk about Marcus."

"The colonizer chef?" Sarah regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth.

"My brother-in-law. The one you reported to the health department for 'cultural food crimes.'" Dr. Chen's voice remained steady. "The one who learned to cook in my mother's restaurant after his parents died. The one who helped put me through graduate school by working double shifts. That colonizer."

For the first time, Sarah noticed other photos on Dr. Chen's desk. A younger Marcus in a Thai kitchen, covered in flour. Marcus at a hospital, holding a newborn. Marcus and his wife teaching a cooking class.

"I... I was just trying to help," Sarah's voice sounded small, even to herself.

"Were you?" Dr. Chen opened her laptop. "Because I have an interesting email here from 2019. Before your... awakening. You wrote to HR complaining about, and I quote, 'the overwhelming food smells' when Marcus first introduced Asian dishes to the cafeteria menu."

Sarah felt the blood drain from her face. She'd forgotten about that email.

"Your activism, Ms. Mitchell, seems to have coincided perfectly with the rise of social media virtue signaling. Before that, you were filing very different kinds of complaints."

Dr. Chen slid a document across the desk. Sarah recognized the company letterhead.

"This is a final warning," Dr. Chen said quietly. "Your behavior has created a hostile work environment — not for the people you claim to protect, but through your persistent harassment of employees who don't conform to your view of what their cultures should be."

"But I'm an ally!" Sarah's voice cracked.

"No, Ms. Mitchell. You're a bully with a hashtag."

As Sarah left the office, her carefully constructed world of performative activism beginning to crack, she passed the cafeteria. Through the window, she saw Marcus teaching a group of employees how to fold dumplings, everyone laughing as their attempts fell apart. She remembered writing an email draft about the "problematic power dynamics" of that cooking class.

For the first time, she wondered if perhaps she'd been the problem all along.

Her phone buzzed again. Another notification. Another chance to be publicly righteous. Her finger hovered over the screen.

But this time, something stopped her.

Chapter 5: The Unraveling

Sarah spent the weekend in crisis. Not the usual kind where she'd discover a white-owned sushi restaurant and organize a Twitter mob, but a real one. Her carefully curated world of performative outrage was crumbling, and worse — people were starting to notice.

Her phone kept buzzing with notifications from her latest crusade, but each one now felt like an accusation. She scrolled through her post history with growing horror:

"This white woman wearing hoop earrings at the grocery store is LITERALLY committing violence..."

"Just watched my neighbor eating with chopsticks. As a white ally, I had to say something..."

"Thread: Why having a world foods aisle in supermarkets perpetuates colonial supremacy (1/47)..."

It was while hate-following her neighbor Tom's Facebook page (looking for problematic content to report) that she saw it: a photo of him at his son's grave, the "Blue Lives Matter" flag gently waving in the background. The caption read: "Five years without you, son. Miss you every day."

Sarah felt physically ill. She remembered the change.org petition she'd started to have him evicted, the anonymous letters she'd sent to his employer, the Instagram stories she'd posted about the "racist cop supporter" next door.

She clicked through to his profile, something she'd never bothered to do before. There were photos of his son's community service work, his volunteer activities at the local youth center, his graduation from the police academy with a stated mission to improve police-community relations. The last photo showed him mediating a peaceful discussion between protesters and police officers, one week before a drunk driver took his life.

"Oh god," Sarah whispered to her empty apartment.

Her phone buzzed again. The CRISJ group chat was on fire. In her absence, they'd discovered that the company's janitorial service was owned by a Hispanic family.

"Cultural exploitation!" someone posted. "They're forcing minorities into servitude roles!"

"Actually," replied another member, "the owner has an MBA and built the company from scratch. They pay above market rate and provide full benefits."

"STOP DEFENDING THE OPPRESSORS!"

Sarah recognized her own rhetorical style in their responses, and it made her cringe. Was this how she sounded?

She thought about Mr. Johnson from the diversity gala, how she'd never bothered to learn about his degrees or his grandchildren. She'd been too busy using him as a prop in her performance of virtue.

Her doorbell rang. Through the peephole, she saw Tom, the neighbor she'd spent months trying to destroy. He was holding a plate of cookies.

"Your sister Kate told me you might be having a rough time," he said when she hesitantly opened the door. "Thought you might like some of these. They're my son's recipe. He used to make them for the kids at the youth center."

Sarah stood frozen, the plate warm in her hands.

"I know what you've been doing, Sarah," he continued, his voice tired but not unkind. "The letters to my boss, the petition, the posts about me. I want you to know I forgive you. And if you ever want to actually talk — about my son, about what he believed in, about anything — I'm right next door."

As Tom walked away, Sarah noticed a group of her CRISJ committee members across the street, phones raised, documenting what they probably saw as her "fraternization with the enemy."

She should have cared about their judgment. A week ago, she would have cared about nothing else.

Instead, she closed her front door, set down the plate of cookies, and for the first time in years, opened her laptop not to condemn, but to learn. She typed into Google: "How to apologize and make amends."

Her phone buzzed one more time. It was an email from Dr. Chen:

"When you're ready to do the real work — not the performative kind — come see me. Bring an appetite. Marcus is teaching another cooking class, and this time, you're actually invited to listen and learn."

Sarah looked at the cookies Tom had brought, picked one up, and took a bite. It was sweet, complex, and nothing like she'd expected.

Kind of like people, she thought, when you actually took the time to know them.

Chapter 6: The Real Work

Sarah deleted her social media accounts on a Tuesday. There was no dramatic announcement, no lengthy explanation about "taking space for self-reflection" — phrases she now recognized as part of her previous performance. She simply clicked "delete account" five times and felt the weight of constant outrage lift from her shoulders.

The CRISJ committee imploded within days of her departure. Without their leader, they'd devolved into accusing each other of increasingly absurd transgressions. The last straw came when someone reported the office's artificial plants as "appropriating nature-based indigenous traditions."

But Sarah wasn't there to see it. She was in the company cafeteria, sweating over a hot stove with Marcus.

"No, no," he laughed, adjusting her grip on the wok. "You're treating it like it's going to bite you. Feel the weight, move with it." He demonstrated the fluid motion of proper stir-frying. "My mother-in-law taught me this. Took me three years to get it right."

"Three years?" Sarah was shocked. "But I thought—"

"That I just decided to 'colonize' Asian cuisine one day?" His eyes twinkled. "That's the problem with assumptions, Sarah. They make for quick judgments but slow learning."

Dr. Chen appeared with a stack of bowls. "Ah, I see you haven't set anything on fire yet. Progress."

Sarah blushed, remembering her previous manifesto about how letting white people cook Asian food was "culinary colonialism." Now she understood the staggering arrogance of having written that without ever having tried to make the food herself, without knowing the stories behind each dish, without understanding that cuisine, like culture, was meant to be shared and celebrated, not policed and segregated.

"I have something for you," Dr. Chen said, pulling out a worn notebook. "My grandmother's recipes. The real ones, not the simplified versions we serve here. But first, you need to learn the history."

And so Sarah learned. Not by posting about it on Instagram, but by listening. Really listening.

She learned how Dr. Chen's grandmother had modified her recipes during the Cultural Revolution, when traditional ingredients were scarce. How Marcus had learned to cook as therapy after losing his parents, finding family in the warm chaos of a restaurant kitchen. How food had been their language of love when words failed across cultural and linguistic barriers.

After the lesson, Sarah walked home, her arms sore from wok-handling and her notebook filled with actual knowledge instead of performative outrage. She passed Tom's house and saw him in the garden.

"Hey," she said, stopping at his fence. "I've been meaning to ask... would you tell me about your son?"

Tom's face softened. "Come on in. I'll make coffee."

For the next two hours, Sarah did something she hadn't done in years: she shut up and listened. Tom showed her photos, told her stories about his son's dedication to community policing, his dreams of reform from within the system, his belief that real change came from understanding, not shouting.

"He used to say," Tom recalled, his voice thick with emotion, "that the hardest part of his job wasn't dealing with criminals. It was dealing with people who were so convinced they were right that they couldn't hear anyone else."

Sarah felt the words like a punch to the gut.

That night, she began writing emails. Not manifestos or callouts, but apologies. To the yoga instructor. To the Spanish development team. To Mr. Johnson. To everyone she'd tried to "save" without bothering to know.

Some responded with forgiveness. Others didn't respond at all. Sarah learned to sit with that discomfort, understanding that real growth wasn't about being seen as good — it was about doing better, even when no one was watching.

Her phone lay silent, notifications turned off. On her kitchen counter, a wok seasoned with actual experience replaced her collection of "Decolonize Everything" coffee mugs. And on her laptop, instead of another angry blog post, she was writing something new:

"Dear Dr. Chen,

I'm ready for the next lesson. Not just about cooking, but about listening. About learning. About doing the real work.

And yes, I know now that the real work doesn't come with a hashtag.

• Sarah"

Chapter 7: Full Circle

One year later, Sarah sat in Conference Room B, the same room where she'd once held court with CRISJ. But today was different. Across from her sat a young white woman named Rebecca, clutching a stack of printed tweets and vibrating with familiar righteous energy.

"These microaggressions cannot stand," Rebecca declared, spreading screenshots across the table. "The cafeteria is literally serving General Tso's chicken. It's not even authentic! As a white ally, I have to speak up for—"

"Have you tried it?" Sarah interrupted quietly.

Rebecca blinked. "What?"

"The chicken. Have you tried Marcus's version?"

"Well, no, but that's not the point. The point is—"

"Come with me," Sarah said, standing up. She led a confused Rebecca to the cafeteria, where Marcus was teaching a group of employees how to properly bread the chicken pieces.

"General Tso's chicken," Marcus explained to the group, "was actually invented in New York City by Chef Peng Chang-kuei. He created it for American palates while maintaining Chinese cooking techniques. Our version here uses his original recipe, which he shared with my wife's family when they ran a restaurant together in Taiwan."

Rebecca deflated slightly. "But... but I read a thread on Twitter..."

"I know," Sarah said softly. "I used to write those threads."

After Marcus's class, Sarah bought Rebecca lunch. Over plates of perfectly crispy General Tso's chicken, Sarah shared her own journey from performative outrage to genuine understanding.

"But how do we fight racism if we can't call it out?" Rebecca asked, her worldview visibly shaking.

"By doing the actual work," Sarah explained. "Remember Mr. Johnson, the janitor I tried to 'save' at the diversity gala? He now teaches night classes in business administration here at the company. I take his class. Not to prove anything to anyone, but because he has thirty years of experience I can learn from."

She told Rebecca about the community program she'd started with Tom, bringing local police officers and neighborhood kids together for cooking classes taught by Marcus. No social media posts, no public accolades — just quiet, meaningful work.

"But nobody knows about all the good you're doing," Rebecca protested.

"Exactly," Sarah smiled. "That's how I know it's real."

As if on cue, Dr. Chen appeared at their table.

"Sarah, we need your help," she said. "The city council is considering a proposal to ban 'non-traditional' businesses from the historic district. Some of our restaurant owners are worried."

The old Sarah would have immediately drafted a Twitter thread about systemic oppression. The new Sarah asked, "When's the council meeting? I'll bring the small business impact studies we've been working on, and maybe Marcus can cater it—show them what 'traditional' really means in our community."

Rebecca watched this exchange with growing understanding. "Could... could I help too?"

Sarah and Dr. Chen exchanged glances. "Of course," Dr. Chen said. "But first, you'll need to learn the difference between helping and performative helping. Sarah's pretty good at explaining that nowadays."

That evening, Sarah walked home past Tom's house. The Blue Lives Matter flag was gone, replaced by a garden of flowers his son had always wanted to plant. They were tended jointly by Tom and local teenagers from Sarah's community program.

Her phone buzzed—her first social media notification in a year. Someone had tagged her in a callout post: "Remember Sarah Mitchell? The so-called ally who betrayed the cause by actually talking to the enemy?"

Sarah laughed and deleted the notification. In her kitchen, a pot of soup simmered—her first solo attempt at Dr. Chen's grandmother's recipe. It wasn't perfect, but it was authentic. Like her allyship now: messy, imperfect, but real.

She ladled out two bowls and headed next door. Tom would want to hear about today's council meeting prep, and she wanted his perspective on community outreach. Not for show, not for social media, not to prove she was "one of the good ones."

But because that's what neighbors do.

That's what people do, when they stop performing and start living.

The End

Epilogue: The Ripple Effect

Three years after Sarah's "cancellation" from social justice Twitter, her old CRISJ committee photo popped up in her Facebook memories. She barely recognized herself in that image: standing at the front, finger pointed mid-lecture, surrounded by a sea of nodding white faces competing to look the most concerned.

Today, she sat in a very different kind of meeting. The community center's conference room was chaos – Marcus demonstrating dumpling-folding techniques to a group of police cadets, Tom's gardening club teenagers teaching elderly residents about sustainable farming, and Mr. Johnson conducting a small business workshop in the corner. Dr. Chen stood beside Sarah, both of them watching Rebecca – yes, that Rebecca – patiently explaining social media marketing to immigrant business owners fighting the historic district restrictions.

"Remember when you thought activism meant having the loudest megaphone?" Dr. Chen asked, sampling one of the dumplings.

Sarah winced. "Please don't remind me."

"No, actually, I think we should remind you." Dr. Chen pulled out her phone and showed Sarah a text message. It was from the yoga instructor Sarah had once tried to cancel: "Starting free classes at the community center next week. Tell Sarah she was right about one thing – yoga should be accessible to everyone. Just not for the reasons she thought."

The door chimed as Tom's neighbor Maria walked in with her teenage son Miguel. Three years ago, Sarah would have immediately labeled Maria a "problematic Latina" for supporting Tom. Now, she knew Maria as the brilliant civil rights attorney who'd helped save three immigrant-owned restaurants from the historic district ban, and Miguel as the talented chef apprenticing under Marcus.

"Hey, Sarah," Miguel called out, "I modified your soup recipe with some of my abuela's spices. Want to try?"

Sarah laughed. "You mean the recipe I nearly got Marcus fired for sharing? Please tell me you made it better."

"Speaking of better," Dr. Chen said, "Have you seen this?"

She handed Sarah a printout of a Twitter thread. Sarah's stomach clenched – she still had a Pavlovian response to Twitter's format – but this was different. Someone had written a thoughtful analysis of how their community had transformed over the past three years. No accusations, no callouts, just reduced police incidents, increased small business ownership, improved community relations.

"The best part?" Dr. Chen smiled. "Nobody knows you had anything to do with it. No hashtags, no viral moments, no performance."

"Thank god," Sarah muttered.

The door chimed again. A young white woman walked in, clutching her phone and practically vibrating with familiar righteous energy. Sarah recognized the look – she'd worn it herself not so long ago.

"Is this where the anti-racism workshop is being held?" the woman demanded. "I have some concerns about cultural appropriation in this neighborhood. I've drafted a thread—"

"Perfect timing," Sarah interrupted, exchanging knowing looks with Dr. Chen. "Marcus is just about to teach us how to make dumplings. Would you like to learn the story behind them?"

"I don't need to learn about—"

"Yes, actually, you do," Sarah said gently. "We all do. Here, wash your hands. The first lesson isn't about dumplings at all – it's about listening."

As she guided the newcomer toward the cooking station, Sarah caught her reflection in the window. Her face was smudged with flour, her "activist" wardrobe replaced with practical cooking clothes, and she was smiling – really smiling, not the performative kind she used to perfect for Instagram.

Her phone buzzed. Another callout post about her "betrayal of the cause" was making the rounds. Sarah ignored it and rolled up her sleeves. There were dumplings to be made, stories to be shared, and actual work to be done.

Later that night, as the community center emptied, Sarah found a note tucked under her coat. In Mr. Johnson's elegant handwriting, it read: "Real change doesn't need an audience. - Your favorite 'brave presence in white spaces' ��"

Sarah pinned the note to the community center's board, right next to the sign-up sheet for next week's cooking classes. The sheet was already full of names – police officers and protesters, immigrants and old-timers, social justice warriors and skeptics, all signed up to learn, to listen, to do the real work.

No hashtags required.

Fin

Author's Note: Behind "The Virtue Signal"

When I set out to write "The Virtue Signal," I aimed to explore one of the most complex and delicate issues in modern discourse: the phenomenon of performative activism and false accusations of racism among white people. The story needed to walk a careful line - examining these behaviors critically while avoiding the very same pitfalls of self-righteousness it sought to critique.

Sarah's character was inspired by what sociologists have termed "white savior complex" - the tendency for some white individuals to view themselves as the rescuers or protectors of people of color, often while inadvertently perpetuating harmful stereotypes and power dynamics. Her journey from performative outrage to genuine understanding mirrors a path many well-meaning people must navigate in our social media age.

The supporting characters were deliberately crafted to subvert the shallow stereotypes that performative activists often deploy. Mr. Johnson isn't just a janitor but a business expert with multiple degrees. Marcus isn't a cultural appropriator but someone who earned his expertise through years of dedicated study and family connection. Dr. Chen isn't a passive victim of colonization but a powerful executive who understands the complexity of cultural exchange.

The choice to make Sarah's victims primarily other white people was intentional - it highlights how performative activism often says more about the accuser's need for validation than any genuine concern for social justice. Tom's story, in particular, shows how quick judgments based on symbols (like the Blue Lives Matter flag) can blind us to human complexity and pain.

The story's structure follows Sarah's transformation from performing goodness to doing good:

• Chapters 1-3 show her at the height of her performative phase

• Chapters 4-5 mark her crisis and beginning of awareness

• Chapters 6-7 demonstrate her growth into genuine allyship

• The Epilogue shows the real-world impact of choosing authentic action over performance

Some readers might notice that the story doesn't offer easy answers or complete redemption. Sarah's former targets don't all forgive her. Her new approach isn't perfect or pure. This messiness is intentional - real growth and genuine allyship aren't about achieving a perfect end state, but about committing to a continuous journey of learning and understanding.

The recurring motif of food throughout the story serves multiple purposes. It represents cultural exchange at its most fundamental level, challenges simplistic notions of authenticity and appropriation, and provides a tangible way to show how learning about other cultures requires humility, patience, and a willingness to make mistakes.

Perhaps most importantly, the story suggests that real social justice work often happens quietly, without social media attention or public accolades. It's in the daily actions, the difficult conversations, the humble learning moments that true change occurs. As Sarah learns, it's not about being seen as "one of the good ones" - it's about doing the actual work, especially when no one is watching.

The ending brings a new performative activist into the community center, suggesting that this cycle continues - but also that there's hope for transformation, if we're willing to put down our phones, roll up our sleeves, and do the real work of building understanding.

In our current climate of social media activism and call-out culture, I hope this story encourages readers to examine their own motivations and actions. Are we performing goodness, or doing good? Are we listening to understand, or waiting to speak? Are we building bridges, or burning them for likes and retweets?

These are questions without easy answers, but they're questions worth asking. Because in the end, real change doesn't come from hashtags or viral posts - it comes from the messy, complex, often invisible work of genuine human connection.

• Hyper

December 2024

Reading Guide: "The Virtue Signal"

Discussion Questions & Analysis

Character Analysis

1. Sarah's Evolution

o How does Sarah's language change throughout the story? Track specific phrases and terms she uses from beginning to end.

o At what moment does Sarah first show genuine self-awareness? Are there earlier hints that she might be capable of change?

o Is Sarah a sympathetic character? Does your sympathy for her change throughout the story?

2. Supporting Characters

o Why is Dr. Chen portrayed as calm and measured rather than angry at Sarah's behavior? What purpose does this serve in the narrative?

o How does Tom's character challenge Sarah's (and perhaps readers') preconceptions about people who display certain political symbols?

o What role does Marcus play beyond just being a chef? How does his character challenge stereotypes about cultural authenticity?

Themes & Symbols

1. Food as Metaphor

o How does the story use cooking and food sharing as a metaphor for cultural exchange?

o What does the contrast between Sarah's initial reaction to "ethnic food" and her later cooking lessons represent?

o Why is learning to cook portrayed as more meaningful than learning to speak about cultural issues?

2. Social Media & Performance

o How does the story portray the relationship between social media activism and real-world change?

o What does Sarah lose when she gives up her social media presence? What does she gain?

o How does the story distinguish between performative and genuine allyship?

3. Power & Privilege

o How does Sarah's initial behavior actually reinforce the power dynamics she claims to fight against?

o What does the story suggest about the relationship between intention and impact in activism?

o How does Sarah's privilege manifest differently before and after her transformation?

Critical Questions

1. On Activism

o Is the story suggesting that all social media activism is inherently performative? Where is the line?

o How does the story define "real work" in terms of social justice? Do you agree with this definition?

o What does the story suggest about the role of public versus private actions in creating social change?

2. On Growth & Change

o Is Sarah's transformation believable? What makes it so (or not)?

o Why do some characters forgive Sarah while others don't? Is this realistic?

o What role does humility play in Sarah's journey? How is this shown in the text?

3. On Community

o How does the community center in the epilogue differ from Sarah's original CRISJ committee?

o What does the story suggest about the relationship between authentic community building and social justice?

o Why does the story end with the appearance of a new "Sarah"? What does this cyclical element suggest?

Contemporary Relevance

1. Current Events & Context

o How does this story relate to contemporary discussions about "wokeness" and "cancel culture"?

o What does the story suggest about the role of white people in anti-racist work?

o How might different readers interpret this story based on their own experiences with activism?

2. Personal Application

o Have you witnessed instances of performative activism in your own life? How did they compare to Sarah's behavior?

o What does this story suggest about how to handle our own mistakes and growth in social justice work?

o How might this story change the way readers approach social media activism?

Writing Craft

1. Structure & Style

o Why does the story use humor and satire rather than taking a more serious tone?

o How does the author balance criticism of performative activism with empathy for well-meaning people?

o What purpose do the food descriptions serve beyond their literal meaning?

2. Narrative Choices

o Why does the story focus on a white protagonist learning about her own behavior rather than on the experiences of people of color?

o How does the author use specific incidents (like the diversity gala, the cooking classes) to illustrate larger themes?

o What is the significance of ending with an epilogue showing the long-term impact of Sarah's change?

Group Discussion Activities

1. Text Analysis

o Compare Sarah's social media posts from the beginning of the story with her actions at the end. What has fundamentally changed?

o Identify moments where characters could have responded with anger to Sarah but chose not to. Why might the author have made this choice?

2. Real-World Connections

o Bring examples of performative activism from current events. How do they compare to Sarah's behavior?

o Discuss examples of genuine allyship you've witnessed. What made them authentic rather than performative?

3. Personal Reflection

o Share instances where you've caught yourself being performative rather than genuine in your attempts to do good.

o Discuss what "doing the real work" means in your own context and community.

Writing Prompts

1. Write a scene from Dr. Chen's perspective during one of her early encounters with Sarah.

2. Compose one of Sarah's apologetic emails to someone she wronged.

3. Draft a social media post that the "new" Sarah might write about genuine community building.

Final Reflection

Consider how this story might influence your own approach to social justice work and online activism. What lessons from Sarah's journey might you apply to your own life?

Mastery and Mission; Mimosa Salon Suites and the path to love

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 18:06:35 GMT

Mastery and Mission; Mimosa Salon Suites and the path to love!

Here is my chapter in the Best Selling book E-Myth Evolution!

I was talking to my chiropractor like he was my therapist.

As he twisted and cracked and released, I poured out my business woes. I was starting to buckle under the weight of my responsibilities, and it was all palpable, there in the back of my neck. He pounded on my shoulders. “You’re all locked up,” he said.

I had recently opened the doors on my most recent business venture: Mimosa Salon Suites. 10,000 square feet of office space in Conyers, Georgia that had been converted into individual salon suites to be rented by beauty professionals. The goal of the business was to provide a landing pad and a place to grow for lower income business owners, primarily black women, most of them in their mid-twenties to mid-forties.

Our occupancy was full, we were doing well and growing, but I was single-handedly managing every aspect of the business. It felt to me like everything in the company relied on me. When I tried to outsource it was ineffective, because no one seemed to care as much as I did or perform to my standards. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew if something didn’t change, I wouldn’t be able to sustain.

My chiropractor looked at me and my hiked-up shoulders, and he presented me with a gift. “Here,” he said. “Read this.”

He handed me his phone. On it was a book, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies, by Michael Gerber.

I left his office, my back feeling much better, and ordered the book as soon as I returned home.

I should back up for a moment and tell you that I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I started at the age of seven, with a lemonade stand on the corner of 35th and MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland, California where I grew up. I chose 35th and MacArthur because it was on one of the busiest corners, across the street from a bus stop. Even at seven I knew a thing or two about supply and demand.

I grew up, and in my early adulthood I caught the wave of the technology boom of the 1980s. I ran a company that sold microprocessors and semiconductors to some of the biggest computer manufacturers of the day. It was good business, but not great for my soul, and was eventually pulled out from underneath me in a hostile takeover.

From there, I moved into marketing, and then to real estate which is where I germinated and eventually built the idea that became Mimosa Salon Suites. I was no beginner, and I’d done plenty of things right, but it wasn’t until I read Awakening that I realized how much I was still doing wrong.

I had built a business on my own faltering back. I hadn’t yet created the systems or innovations that would allow me to step out from under all the daily tasks and truly begin to grow.

I’ve always been a reader, and a self-taught man, so I began to implement Michael Gerber’s lessons immediately. E-Myth had changed my mind set in a single reading, but it was just the beginning of a larger shift. Like any transformative book or set of ideas, it was a catalyst rather than an endpoint. I went on the read E-Myth Mastery; The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World-Class Company, next. Others followed.

What I understood right away is that I would need to learn and become an expert in all the different areas of my business. The Seven Essential Disciplines became a blueprint for how I could begin to have true mastery over this thing that I was building. I did what I always do: I began. I put one foot in front of the other. The spirit that kept me hawking cups of lemonade when I was seven was the same spirit that I brought to growing my business:

“I’m not sure if this is going to work, but I’m going to give it a try.”

It’s the song of the self-made person. It doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest or the fastest, if you can stay the course and stick it out, even when things get tough, you’re going to go the distance. I dug in. I started studying and researching and learning. I read every other E-Myth book I could get my hands on, as well as many other books on the areas I needed to grow into. As I progressed, I found two key lessons to be the most pivotal in taking my business from one 10,000 square foot location to three locations making almost $1,000,000 a year in revenue.

Lesson One

I needed to have a mission far larger than the success of the business, and after working through the exercises in Part One of E-Myth Mastery I came up with our mission statement “One Million Square Feet of Hope!”

I’m no stranger to missions. When I was young and on the heady cutting-edge of personal computers, I tasted a kind of financial success I’d never known before. I had tens of millions of dollars in contracts, and I was living the high life, in every sense of the word. Though it had its thrills, there was an emptiness to what I was doing. I, and everyone around me, was motivated entirely by the almighty dollar. I was rich, but I wasn’t sleeping well at night.

I understood, without anyone ever telling me, that the road I was on might lead me to a vast fortune, but it wouldn’t take my soul anywhere but down. It was when I left that world, and started building websites as a contractor that the first seeds of mission were planted.

I still remember the church service I went to, just months before I started Mimosa Salon Suites. I was making in the high six-figures at the time, and the sermon was about how those of us with wealth needed to find ways to give back. It hit me hard. After leaving the world of big tech, I had encountered my spiritual self and developed a deeply personal relationship with God. I understood how much of the health and goodness of my current life was due to that union, so I took the sermon seriously: I was supposed to be a good steward, using what I’d been given to make the world a better place.

I sat in the pew and made the decision. I would find a way to do something sustainable, that would provide a service to people in the world who needed help and support. Reading E-Myth, all those many years later, reminded me of the importance of my original mission.

The goal of your business can’t be the profit. If it is, you’ll lose sight of what matters and quite possibly who you are and what you stand for.

The goal of your business must be the community you’ll serve, the changes you will bring, and the hearts you plan to set aflame.

I wasn’t just renting salon space; I was helping people become entrepreneurs. With that in mind, I began to focus on all the ways in which we could support our tenants so that if they wanted to, they could grow into business owners themselves. Today, every new tenant in any of our Salon Suites locations gets a free copy of Awakening the Entrepreneur Within. We’ve created online courses about business development that we offer free of charge to our tenants. Instead of trying to trap people in a lease, we have a seven-day cancellation policy. We also offer a three-week break from rent for maternity leave, one week for bereavement, and prorated rent for any kind of hospital stay. We’re one of the only in our industry with these kinds of policies in place.

If our mission was pure profit, we would act like ninety-nine percent of the other landlords out there and hold tenants captive until they finally managed to squeak out of their grasp. This kind of predatory practice, at its core, just isn’t good for business.

It turns out that being compassionate, and just doing the right thing, is.

The men and women who rent from us are fiercely independent and quite motivated. They’re sick of being gouged renting a chair at a larger salon, where they have no freedom, and no right to the profits of any products that they sell. They want something that they can call their own, and that’s what we provide for them. In most cases, when one of our tenants leave, it’s because they are starting their own salon or shop.

Most landlords hate the move out notice from a tenant, but for me it’s cause for celebration. Many of these people have become an extension of my family. I’ve coached them when they’ve asked, supported their aspirations in whatever way I can, and watching them walk out the door toward their own business venture fills me with pride. Not that I did any of it, mind you, it’s all their own drive and determination that got them there—but it always feels like an honor to have provided them with a place to start.

And, because our practices are built on compassionate, support, and growth; there’s always another tenant ready to fill their spot.

Lesson Two

Awakening will get your mind set in the right direction, and Mastery will set you on the path to growth. As I began to learn about all the disparate areas of the business, simultaneous to building our mission, it became clear that understanding the ins and outs of the business was the only way out of the trap of “doing it all myself.” I taught myself sales and marketing and operations. I learned the needs and pain points of our tenants. I figured out what was missing, and then found the people and processes to fill those gaps.

The results of this work were undeniable. We went from $200,000 in revenue to $950,000 in revenue over several years, maintaining a healthy fifty percent margin with the eighty-two units we run at 100% occupancy. Because of the systems now in place, we have our eye on big growth by way of franchising.

Because of my tech background, I understood that we had to leverage technology in every way we could to create systems and processes that work. For time and project management we use Basecamp. For surveys we use SurveyMonkey. For social media planning and scheduling we use Hootsuite. Most recently, we’ve begun adopting the AI strategies from AI marketing platform, deal.ai. You can’t have a true enterprise if you don’t have enterprise systems in place.

I also made sure that we had a built-in innovation loop in place. That means that innovation is an active, trackable part of the systems of the company. We aren’t just maintaining the status quo, we are constantly evolving so that at any given point in time, we are at least a step or two ahead of our peers and competitors. The COVID 19 pandemic was a great example of this. By February of 2020, I saw the writing on the wall. I was one of the first business owners in Atlanta to write the initial medical protocols for the pandemic. These later got woven into the state policy. I understood that it was our job to create an environment where people both felt safe and were safe. We accomplished it, and because of that planning and innovating, Mimosa Salon Suites were able to stay open throughout most of the entire pandemic.

These are just some of the ways in which building true mastery will help you survive. Very few businesses do. Creating a business plan that reflects your values and building your own deep understanding of your organization and its systems, will separate you as a survivor, rather than just another flash-in-the-pan.

As I learned and stretched, I documented every part of the business we were building. At this point, many years into this learning, I am confident that if I disappeared tomorrow my business could run successfully without me. That’s how ingrained and teachable every process is. I’ve also created a succession plan, and the youngest of my four children, my daughter Mali, is set to learn the business and one day take over. To my great pride and joy.

This groundwork also supports our next step, franchising Mimosa Salon Suites. My “One Million Square Feet of Hope,” dream is to see a Salon Suites in every city in the country—wherever there is need—so that aspiring salon owners can have a place to build their own future. I’ve seen the impact we’ve had on the community here in East Metro Atlanta, and I know the need is deep and far-reaching.

As we execute our franchise plan and wait for the ideal economic timing (another lesson of mastery), I’m busy growing and coaching. I’ve realized that I, as the face of the business, am an integral part of its continued success. A system of my own. So, I have prioritized my health and well-being, to grow right along with the business. I believe that by building my own brand, I can reach beyond my tenants and colleagues, to touch the hearts of other business owners and entrepreneurs. Especially those of my own generation. Because getting older doesn’t have to mean sitting in a chair on your porch, watching the world go by. Aging is not what it once was. I’m sixty-three years old, and I have no plans to slow down anytime soon.

Michael Gerber, now eighty-seven himself, often gets asked if he’s going to retire. His answer is always no. Why would he? If he’s taught us anything, it’s that when you’re building something great, living your dream, and aligned with a mission larger than yourself, there is no need to stop. If you’re lit up with what you’re doing, all you want to do is keep it going.

As I get older, my mission comes into even sharper focus.

I’m here to build bridges for aspiring entrepreneurs. I’m here to encourage and to coach and create opportunities. But more than anything, I’m here to love. To find grace and compassion and forgiveness wherever it lives.

So many of us look to our differences instead of what we have in common. Creating Mimosa Salon Suites has shown me how alike we all really are, and though I may not have known it at the time, it was love that motivated the creation of Mimosa Salon Suites from the very beginning, and love that will keep it going, growing, and innovating.

Once you find that—the love that powers your goals—then you know you’re on the right path.

Read more inspirational stories from 11 other entrepreneurs!

Buy the Best Selling book E-Myth Evolution on Amazon.com today!

Thanks for reading.

Never Forget 9/11

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 16:23:42 GMT

We Will Never Forget 9/11!

Turn Our Greif into Action

Never forget 9/11. Never let the children forget. Whatever you think, if it was the enemy from within or the evil from outside, thousands died. But even as we remember the victims and honor the heroes of that terrible day, we should always remain constant with love and love defends those who need protection.

Follow Your Heart

Today, the world needs the protection that only comes from love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemy and pray for him that he might turn from his evil ways but in all things fight. Fight for what you know in your heart is right. Fight for freedom. Fight to protect the children from the sickness and confusion that will cause their harm.

Know What Your Are Fighting For

Fight for your right to live free and protect your family. At the end of your life, don't have this regret, that you did nothing to stop the evils of Communism & Marxism, that's all there is to it.

For the Love of God, Family & Country!

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Everyone is Lovable

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 19:43:53 GMT

Everyone is a child of God and capable of loving and being loved.

We Are God’s Children

Children are born innocent and unconditionally lovable. No matter what choices or actions a child displays, we are to love them without harsh judgement. As we turn into adults, we become accountable for our actions and our behavior directly effects how others perceive us. This leads to contrast throughout mankind and we begin to develop friends versus enemies. However, deeming people unlovable and deciphering to have enemies has absolutely no benefit to your life.

The best way to remember that hate has no place in our hearts, is to turn to God. All adults are forever God’s children. God has unconditional love for all and studying his word can greatly encourage forgiveness and acceptance of others into your daily life. Let’s reflect.

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:8

Although we sinned, Christ still died for us. This action alone should help us understand that enemies do not exist outside our own perception and judgement. All are worthy of love and all are lovable. Loving those who are difficult to love, is extending our love received from Christ.

It Feels Good to Love

Take a moment and reflect on a scenario when you said something terrible or acted in a way that you later regretted. Now think about how those around you offered forgiveness and how that forgiveness felt. It’s likely that you felt relieved and changed how you handled similar situations in the future. Forgiveness is a form of love.

Forgiving someone can feel equally liberating as being forgiven. When you hold a grudge, it doesn’t feel good and invites anxiety and anger into your life. While you may think that this grudge is teaching the person at hand a lesson, it is not. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Holding anger for someone is giving them control over your feelings and, in some scenarios, your life. When you release the hate, you can begin to think and act with your heart instead of your ego. The picture may become clearer as you start to perceive situations with compassion and forgiveness becomes effortless.

“ You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” – Matthew 5:38-4 2

By forgiving and welcoming in only words and actions of love, you gain back that control. If someone treats us badly, we are allowed to feel hurt, but it is never a reason to hurt them back. The cliché saying , “two wrongs don’t make a right” holds true in this case. When we love others unconditionally, we become proof of God’s word, as we become the vessel for the extension of this love.

Love From a Distance

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” – Luke 6:27-28

Loving others does not always mean we need to be physically present in that person’s life. Even at a distance, we can still project love! Praying is a great way to love others who we may not be ready to physically be around. Many people act in harmful ways because they are hurt deep inside. Anger is a secondary emotion to sadness. Someone who treats others badly was likely treated badly themselves, hence where they learned such behavior. Pray for their healing, happiness, and forgiveness.

We can also practice speaking positively about those we dislike. Gossip is the language of the ego, and doing so brings nothing but negativity into our lives. Gossip is passing judgment without allowing the other person to defend themselves. It only feeds our ego into believing our reaction to the situation was justified. This does not solve anything and can make us look untrustworthy to those we are gossiping to. We should speak kindly of our enemies and stay present.

All Are Lovable

In conclusion, all living creatures are lovable and a creation of God. The ability to love is the primary evidence of Christ living through us. We are all prone to making mistakes and likewise, we can all make changes. This is what growth looks like and we must be loved in order to have an inspiration and desire for such growth.

Next time you are feeling like a person in your life is unlovable, turn to God. Pray for them as he does for us and wish abundance and happiness for all. By doing this, we can feel less angry and use our energy into creating good.

Compassion Makes Us Human

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 03:28:06 GMT

The millennial generation has continued to neglect compassion for others.

Why is this?

What is Compassion?

Compassion is a term we often use but it’s meaning can get lost in translation, as there are several other similar terms. It’s important to understand the meaning of compassion so that we can fully grasp its significance and embrace it in our everyday lives.

Meriam-Webster defines compassion as:

“sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”

Oxford Languages defines compassion as:

“sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortune of others.”

Notice how the word sympathy is used in both definitions. Sympathy is our ability to feel someone else's pain and offer care or support. This is much different that empathy, which is simply understanding another person’s suffering. From a scientific standpoint, many people argue that empathy is a more beneficial way to help others because it does not bridge the feeling between two people but rather allows one to help the other.

However, sympathy is a natural reaction that humans experience between each other. Empathy takes a sense of control over your own emotions and the ability to separate them from the person needing support. Sympathy is an automatic response that stems from your own experiences and perspectives. In a way, expressing sympathy forces you to sacrifice a bit of your own energy to deeply understand and relate to another person's suffrage versus simply recognizing that suffrage is existing within them.

When Do We Experience Compassion?

When do we see people expressing compassion? Compassion is often demonstrated at times of suffering or pain. These situations could be as small as witnessing an elderly lady tripping at the store while carrying groceries or as significant as attending a funeral for a friend’s passed loved one.

Compassion is what sets us apart from other animals in nature. It’s an immediate sacrifice to feel temporary discomfort in order to relate to another human. You may feel compassion for the lady tripping with the groceries because you had an aunt who had a deadly fall in the past, so you drop what you are doing to help, even if it delays your route or schedule at the moment. Likewise, when we attend a funeral, we most likely plan on having empathy for the loved ones suffering by being present, however, we are likely to be overrun with compassion and sympathy as memories of our own lost loved ones begin to surface in those moments.

When compassion arises, we see people hugging, hands on shoulders, and eye contact with strong emotional reactions. This is the significance of human nature. Our experiences and perspectives intertwine by way of compassion and understanding like one big web of stories and endings and beginnings.

Lack of Compassion Creates Division

When it comes to a compassionate society here in America, we have been falling short for three decades now. We’ve seen movements in support of abortions, selective racism, and violent solutions to conflict. In 2020, we saw much of this playout when the race wars began and groups such as BLM rioted through large cities. Cities were burned to the ground, businesses were destroyed beyond repair, and frantic, scared, citizens were taking cover from it all.

At the same time, we experienced a COVID19 pandemic where we witnessed America dividing based on personal medical choices. The unvaccinated were alienated as deserving to die and being irresponsible, yet the vaccine was still experimental and many questions were still unanswered about its efficacy. The division was backed up by legalities in the form of mandates. People disconnected from jobs, hobbies, friends, and family. Medical freedom was at stake and people did not care so long as it was in support of their own medical beliefs.

Then came the LGBT movement of 2021. In the past, America has become very accepting and open to the LGBT community, but in this particular year the support went from equal to manipulatively intentional. We saw children being invited to inappropriate pride parades with nude adults, sex education curriculum creeping down to our 5 and 6 year old kids, and laws attempting to legalize underage sex changes. Parents all across America became scared of losing their parental rights.

Reflecting back on the race wars, pandemic, and LGBT push, many might ask how society became so violent, compassionless, and unforgiving about life. The answer to this question lies in the timeline of those involved and how America has transformed over that time span. The majority of the LGBT community, BLM rioters, and mandate advocates are in fact millennials.

Millennials Age 24-35

Globalists such as Soros and other like-minded powerful people in both America and the CPC, have been following out their plan of dumbing down Americans since the early 90s. This is also a time period when millennials were attending public school. The public school system began slowly and progressively indoctrinating our children to believe in and admire socialism traits. They were taught to believe in climate change and embrace the large corporations fighting against it. They were also convinced that being educated was only tied to a college education, where the indoctrination only continued further. Perhaps the most significant trait they adopted was accepting mental illness as curable by pharmaceuticals, that our biological sex is changeable, and abortion does not include true life form. Flash forward to today, and millennials make up much of our administrative activists, educators, and healthcare workers.

People in these professions were one of the leading factors in the wave of compassionless conflicts America experienced over the last few years. They supported and advocated for corrupt movements and socialist agendas. They marched, rioted, and infiltrated our schools and medical systems. The educators liberal and woke perspectives spilled out into the classrooms and some schools even adopted the liberal agenda all together. While this tie contributed to the spread of liberal and woke movements, it also allowed transparency to parents all over America. This is what caused a pushback and could arguably have saved our country from a full-blown socialism takeover.

Since 2019, there have been nearly 4 million children leaving the public school system. Parents are resorting to homeschooling which is direct evidence of the lack of acceptance amongst parents when it comes to education. It’s one problem to have these agendas pushed on adults, but to push them onto free and innocent minds of our children stirred up the momentum we needed to keep it at bay.

However, the fight is not over. Millennials in America continue to be compassionless to the heart of America which is freedom and liberty. Like robots, they have been brainwashed to go along with the mainstream media and to believe they are social justice warriors in doing so. Although we made it through these last few years of chaos, the deep state and other threatening organizations such as the CPC, will continue to attempt to cage America into their control as we go into the future.

It’s important that we expose the millennials for their compassionless behavior and hold them accountable for what America had to endure. The hope has lied within the older boomer generations and the new generation of children. Boomers support for freedom in our country stems from their upbringing around war and propaganda. The new generation of children comes in with fresh and clear minds. We need to talk about the indoctrination and corrupt agendas to our children and work together to keep fighting for the future of this country.

Politics

All of these conflicts have also been heightened by politics. While politics are vital to a democracy and successful system among society, they can also take away from our human-to-human understandings. Just like we saw with wars, political beliefs often stem from one’s personal experiences in life and the morals they learned from birth on. This notion reminds me of two soldiers mirroring one another on a battlefield against each other. Each is defending what they believe is right.

Politics can largely be an ongoing deciphering of what we believe to be right and wrong. Here in America, no matter which party you identify with, we should all agree on a country based around freedom and liberty. While we vote on laws, we should always preserve freedom over our speech, body, and religion promised in our constitution.

Millennials seemed to have forgotten this promise as they divided themselves based on their personal beliefs and put our freedoms at risk of control. Most identify as Democrats or Liberals because the Democratic Party survives off of its followers into socialism, disguising agendas as justice and empowerment. Both factors are eye candy to the millennial looking for direction with a lack of discernment from decades of indoctrination to not think for themselves.

Identify as Human

What caused the division was not our skin color, gender, or vaccine status. The division was caused by lack of compassion for one another.

Skin color decided how worthy our suffering was.

Gender choices decided how worthy our suffering was.

Vaccination status decided how worthy our suffering was.

This mindset divided us as humans, as Americans. A dark skinned and fair skinned person can suffer equally and both deserve love and support, as do a gay or straight person or a vaccinated or unvaccinated person. Liberal millennials instead tried to push their divisive beliefs on the masses and if one did not comply, you were outed as a racist or right leaning bigot. However, the Republicans and right leaning Americans were simply fighting for freedom for all. This is the foundation of America and what should be preserved at all costs. These movements and pandemics were all attempts by the left to control the masses and put freedom in jeopardy, and the liberals lead the way.

Community in America

Compassion is what will hold a community together. When we live in a free and liberated country, compassion tends to thrive even more and becomes a necessity. We are free to live life with our own political and religious beliefs and rights over our bodies. America is a country developed off of differences. It is what makes us the land of the free, home of the brave. As we reflect on the last few years of chaos and havoc, remember that your neighbor is worthy of compassion just as you are, no matter their skin color, gender, religion or political beliefs. At the end of the day, we are all human and forgetting compassion turns us back into animals, dividing into groups and becoming territorial while ignoring the simple fact that we are one.

Compassion will keep us unified as caring individuals striving for a connected and diverse community. Remember that our country keeps us free only as long as our hearts remain free too.

Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.

Peter 3:8

Going the Extra Mile

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 02:51:16 GMT

The importance of faith, purpose, and freedom in the success of America.

My Multicultural Start to Life

I was raised in Oakland, California in the late 60’s and early 70’s and it is safe to say I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Yes, I experienced significant challenges in my youth, but I also gained knowledge that later proved to guide me straight to success. I learned about multicultural dynamics and how important having an open mind really is. I was brought up around children from all different ethnic backgrounds and walks of life. We didn’t pay attention to racial differences like people do today. We were all one.

I can remember this nighttime show on KSAN that featured guests, many of which were professors at UC Berkeley and Stanford University, who had Islam, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, and many other, perspectives. The area I lived in and attended school at, literally 5 miles from UC Berkeley, was at the time the epicenter of enlightened thought and philosophy.

Looking back now, I feel fortunate to have learned the Universal Truth from so many brilliant people. Most of the people my parents hung out with, and my teachers and coaches, were all significantly influenced by this cultural phenomenon.

Today, I believe I have a uniquely authentic and truthful perspective on life compared to people in the generations that followed as well as others from other regions at that time.

My generation was solidified with hard work, not hand-outs, and many of us carried this ethic with us into adulthood. We didn’t have a sense of entitlement like in today’s generation.

The need for a servant minded society is more important today than the fake issues such as climate, racism, wars, etc., because without a servant’s heart we will fail to live in freedom and experience the blessings of wealth and good health.

Finding Meaning Through God

As a teenager, I was homeless at one point and on my own in the world, but I still had the mindset of success stemming from the economic courses I took in school. The expectation set on us kids in those times were if you work hard and try your best with a good heart and great intentions you could accomplish most anything.

The courses I took in school back then and the ideologies that were once considered awe inspiring, unfortunately, aren’t part of curriculum in today’s education and definitely not part of the social and educational indoctrination that is going on today. Most 20 year old people draw a blank at the term laissez faire economics.

At the time I was just getting started in my career, in the late 70’s and early 80’s, it was more common for young adults to find early success and start building a life than it is today, and I did just that.

However, it wasn’t until later that I came to a crossroads with the meaning of life. It was in 1987 as I was cruising down the 405 in my Vette, high on cocaine, when my life flashed before my eyes and I received my sign from God. From that day on, I became a servant to others, following God’s path in whatever I accomplished. I found meaning.

My Christian faith went hand in hand with my experience in economics and I began to see true reward from God. I lived the American dream, owning multiple successful businesses and creating a beautiful home for my family.

Today I am deeply grateful for the people and things that gave me many key lessons in life and I want to share my them along with my Christian values and beliefs with today's generation because our country has veered away from success and individual independence due to the constant backlash from socialist agendas infiltrating our government.

It is my duty and my honor to help give to our youth the meaning and understanding of success and hard work to protect their future freedom. With the word of God, anything is made possible so long as your serve a purpose to life here on earth. In this piece I will review several Christian idioms that build a foundation under success and explain how the socialist agenda threatens to eliminate religion and independence.

What Happened to Economics?

In my 8th Grade Economics class, Laissez Faire Economics was a mandatory principle which sadly is not part of today’s public-school curriculum. Yet laissez faire economics still holds great significance for the success of our nation. Laissez Faire Economics was not an odd term that you would quickly Google for a definition. It was discussed at dinner, promoted in school, and inspirational quotes were seen regularly in the community.

Most of us I suspect just assumed that our kids were being taught the same stuff as we were. Wrong!

Success in business and trade with little to no government control nor intervention was encouraged. While at the same time it was instilled in us that welfare takes away basic human rights by encouraging people to be lazy and not take pride in working.

Welfare was a condition that was not encouraged and people both agreed and understood that money could simply not be endlessly printed because inflation would take over the American dream. We wanted to work. We wanted success and independence.

But alas, vast sums of China (CPC) money influenced the corrupt and propaganda peddling American Teachers Association (and all that ilk) were busy brainwashing our kids right under our noses. The sick part is the money comes from us buying China stuff on Amazon!

So we are now almost hopelessly ruined as a country because many are so brainwashed that they actually hate this country when the actual data, just pure objective data, overwhelmingly makes the case that we, the United states of America, are the best country on earth today and the best country there ever has been in the history of man. Perfect, no. Best ever, yes. To be hated? Really? Dumb asses...

I highly suggest reading Shelby Steele, a prominent black conservative who suggests that welfare is literally an extension of the slave plantation and is the worst form of racism because it strips away the dignity of work.

See: White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era Paperback - May 29, 2007.

Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/White-Guilt-Together-Destroyed-Promise/dp/0060578637

We must all overcome the tendency, as compassionate human beings, to take our past mistakes so hard that we harm our selves. Let us learn from our mistakes, and vow to never repeat them, and make the best use of the lessons learned to sing the song of brotherhood, fidelity and freedom!

We need each other more than ever now. Black, white, red, yellow and brown, (forgive if I left any out) we are all humans and we can thrive best by simply loving each other.

Just love each other.

There’s No Such Thing as Free Lunch

The above American idiom is from the book, There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch by Milton Freidman. This book was a staple during my generation and teaches everything one needs to know about economics. The author was widely accepted as one of the best economists of all time.

“Money won't create success, the freedom to make it will” (Freidman).

So where can we find this book today? On Amazon there are limited copies and asking price is over $3k! However, you will see an abundance of books available with socialist titles such as There’s No Such Thing as a free Lunch, or is There .

This isn't shocking coming from a multi-billion-dollar corporation that has been going along with the socialist agenda to gain control over the masses and keep a monopoly over them.

The corporate globalists are working overtime to erase history and belief systems by controlling the books we read, the news we get, and the content we see online.

What is even more disturbing is the content they push on us. It’s easier to find a book on Bestiality than Laissez Faire Economics which makes a significant statement about the current condition of our society.

Another important work is another book authored by Freidman named Capitalism and Freedom. In this book, he explains the role of capitalism in liberal society. He sold over four hundred thousand hard copies and millions of paperback copies since its publication and the book was translated into eighteen different languages.

Topics covered include the roles of government in a free society, education, trade arrangements, capitalism, and social responsibility. Freidman's political beliefs have contributed to the development of new parties such as the Libertarians. The younger generation has neglected the importance of individual freedom and books such as these are important to keep relevant as the left tries to manipulate the free mind into a controlled one.

This is a must read to learn how a truly free society should do business.

Get your copy here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51877.Capitalism_and_Freedom

What Is Reward and Sacrifice?

While economics and political understanding is vital to the success and freedom of our children, it will serve no significance without a strong belief system. It’s not only lack of understanding for individual freedom but also the lack of meaning in life and purpose that drains away the desire and quest for exploration, discovery, commerce, and success. This a a really bad, life threatening cancer that is eating away at our society today.

The saying, reward comes with sacrifice, has been manipulated over time and unless it comes straight from the Bible, it’s likely blasphemy disguised as some form of socialist agenda.

This notion is best exemplified from the way Christ was the ultimate servant, paying the ultimate sacrifice when He gave himself to us when He died on the cross even though He knew we were really bad sinners. As Christians, we should want to follow Jesus's example and serve others by sacrificing without seeking any reward or the reward will cease to come.

Teens and young adults have essentially forgotten the importance of sacrifice and replaced it with entitlement, the ultimate self-serving ideology. This is rapidly becoming the new religion of today. If this continues, the current younger generation will see no reward and sadly become dependent on the ill intentions of the government. A self-serving government and a self-serving society will doom the common person to live in misery and slavery.

However, if we sacrifice with pure intentions and faith in God, many rewards will inevitably come back to us. In Luke 18 we are reminded of the rewards we will receive for being faithful.

•    God Rewards the Elect with Justice (18:1-8)
•    God Rewards the Sinner with Mercy (18:9-14)
•    God Rewards the Humble with His Kingdom (18:15-17)
•    God Rewards the Self-Denying with Eternal Life (18:18-30)

• God Rewards the Blind with Sight (18:31-43)

From my youth and up to about ten years ago, most Christian churches in America would preach sermons at least 2 or 3 times a year centered around sacrifice and reward. We were taught that true blessings only come when we choose to put ourselves out into the world as servants. It is really true, God will always reward the faithful!

Today, this notion has become distorted by evil agendas or eliminated altogether. Yet, as servants of God, it’s our duty to keep these key teachings alive and teach them to whoever we can. People who believe they are entitled often do not make any personal sacrifices and therefore any reward given will come from ill intentions and therefore not be genuine in its nature. Hardships and ruinous tribulations must surely follow them all ther days. Unless they repent and turn to Jesus!

My advice is to give all you can, as often as you can, and do it so that nobody knows it was you who did it.

Give With a Pure Heart

After one understands the dynamic of reward and sacrifice, we must reflect on our intentions behind our sacrifice. We will receive exactly what we put out.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.”

Colossians 3:23-25

We must give with a pure heart, and we must give without the expectation of receiving anything in return. Likewise, we must always treat others the way we would like to be treated, giving in the same way we want to receive. This was taught to me by my Grandmother Louise, and she called it “The Golden Rule”.

For example, donating to someone solely to get the label as a good person will not reward us in the same way that donating in secrecy will. Jesus said that a person who gives quietly in their closet will receive the best reward that only God can give. These gifts include supernatural abilities such as things happening in your favor. This is what we Christians commonly call “Gods favor”.

Sadly, millennials are abandoning this philosophy and trading it for only working if promised something in return. The socialist leaders disguise certain rewards as promises for virtue but really, they are for self-gain as well.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”

Colossians 3:23

This socialist ideology only results in more power grabs and a never-ending cycle of negative intentions which secretly strip us of individual freedom and beliefs. In a sense, our youth are making a deal with the devil instead of trusting faith in God and his abilities that reach beyond any materialistic values. Atheists are becoming ever so popular in the new generation, but we can correlate the religious shift with increased suicide and mental health problems and decline in physical health.

These consequences align with the socialist agenda to destroy faith and use the government power to rule over all of society. They have the confidence and determination to succeed at this but with our faith in God and positive energy into being a service to others, we will always overcome this agenda. Right now, is a pivotal time for us to lead unto others and God has led unto us.

We can’t continue to claim to be Christians while refusing to spread the word of God to those around us. We cannot lead society out of this dark hole and into the light unless we commit ourselves to show them the way. Our intentions as Christians are for the success of our country, really the entire world, not just for ourselves, and this is what will save America, and the world, before it’s too late.

Millennials Have Abandoned Meaning and Purpose

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Matthew 6:1-34

In a society with growing pressure for acceptance and recognition, and an unsatiable need for validation, we find this demand negatively affecting our sense of purpose and meaning. Social platforms are an everyday part of most young people’s lives and they’ve targeted their focus on approval from others.

This consequently leads our youth away from serving others and instead serving themselves. It’s also distorted the essence of giving and community service. People are only being a service to others to get the satisfaction of approval from others.

Likewise, they are being influenced to live life without a healthy belief system and thus having difficulty finding meaning in purpose for their existence. The socialist agenda wipes them of their beliefs and disguises itself as virtuous as it pushes them for government dependence as temporary reparations and rewards.

These handouts feel good in the moment, but true reward will never come, and this cycle will continue to repeat itself until the soul is washed of all meaning. The real pandemic is suicide, the ultimate consequence to loneliness.

Karma, the Universal Notion

So far, we have covered the works of the Bible and the lacking belief system among our youth, but what will the result be to these self-serving agendas on both an individual and national scale?

Karma.

Karma is a notion that is practically universal among all religions and philosophy. In today’s society, the word karma has been dumbed down to simple, “do bad things and bad things will happen to you”, but its meaning is more significant that this cliché saying, and many economists have based their theories off of it.

Christianity:

The bible preaches that the ill intentions we partake in are sin and the effect of sin will return to us. One verse that reflects this notion is Matthew 7:12, “ So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets ”. This of course also means that the good we do will be returned to us, a hundred fold!

Matthew 13:8, 23 and Luke 8:8 is Jesus’ parable of the sower. It is about gospel workers who go forth and sow seeds of gospel truth (not money) in order to harvest souls (not money) for the kingdom of God. The context is NOT about money! In 13:10 the disciples asked Jesus why he taught in parables. Referring to knowledge of the “ mysteries of heaven ” in 13:11, Jesus says in 13:12 that those who are given knowledge from God will be given even “more abundance” --of knowledge, not money! Again this is referring to knowledge and not money.

When I pray, I thank Jesus for the blessings He has bestowed upon us and I ask Him for supernatural power to be healthy, wealthy, and wise in His ways. Some might be critical of the wealthy part; all I know is that MY God is a God of plenty!

Quran :

In verse 7 of chapter 99 in the Holy Quran, it states, “S o whoever does a good deed equal to the weight of the minutest particle, will see it” . Chapter 8 states, “ And whoever does an evil deed equal to the weight of the minutest particle, will see it .” They believe that karma means all actions result in a reaction, whether positive or negative. The Quran is the ancient scripture of Islam.

Greek Mythology:

The name Nemesis is related to the Greek word “ nemein ” which means to give what is due. “Nem” means to distribute. The goddess Nemesis decides retribution for those who are arrogant to the Gods.

Buddhism:

Karma is a fundamental principle in Buddhist philosophy. It is centered around present and future life and rebirth. In simple terms, it states that evil actions in this life will result in a rebirth into a negative environment where as good actions, such as selflessness and giving, will result in rebirth into a positive environment. Understanding karma is important for obtaining greater happiness through good deeds.

Karma was established back in what I like to call the beginning of the beginning and today’s youth should be researching its development from scholars and readings, not TikTok and Instagram graphics. Why is karma so important to understand in depth? Simply because an individual creates their own.

Freedom Must Be Maintained

Now that we’ve covered purpose, good intentions, karma, and being a service to others, I will discuss why these factors are significant to freedom. Freedom is necessary for us as a society to be able to have the right to practice religion and therefore be a service to each other thus making a strong community.

Without the freedom to think for ourselves we lose our ability to reach independence and success. We will end up a society dependent on the government and it will start with the decline free trade and end with controlled minds and actions.

Not only does this take from our personal purpose and meaning, it also sets our country up for negative consequences from the karma of bad intentions and evil agendas.

America is the first and only country to reach freedom and create a government out of its own people, for the people, and by the people. Our great Constitution promises these rights and hundreds of thousands of people have died sacrificing their lives for us to have them today.

In return, we must sacrifice to protect this privilege. The socialists will relentlessly and confidently try to pervert the Constitution with their desire for power and to control us, but the laws within it will forever be on the side of We The People.

We defeated fascism in World War 2 and communism in the Cold War. We have defeated the socialist attempts to dictate by utilizing the laws promised in the Constitution. We need to continue to fight for our freedom because it must be maintained, and we the people have all the tools to do this.

We need to teach our youth about their rights and the importance of capitalism and economics. We need to bring purpose back to average American by way of Christ and create good karma within our society and country.

Ronald Reagan once said:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free”.

Freedom is not free, and sacrifice is in high demand for the better of America. The Constitution gives us ALL the power, but we do not exercise this power, because we either don’t know we can or we don’t care enough. Whether by apathy or ignorance, we owe it to our forefathers, our descendants, and ourselves to stop being either and get in the game!

National efforts are weak against entrenched Wokites. But the constitution has given us a way to peel back the power at the Federal level and bring it back to the states and counties where it belongs!

Article V of the Constitution gives States the power to hold a convention to do just this!

But of course Federal Senators are a waste of time, as moving them requires activity on a macro scale and taking away their fist hold over our freedoms and takes away their power and corrupted money flow.

So what you must do are two very important things. ONE, you must learn your rights! Go to www.patriotacademy.com and sign up! TWO, you must join the Article V campaign at www.cosaction.com!

Don’t just sit back and let these people steal it all away! It does not have to be that way! Get involved now!

Do your part today!

Time Management is the Foundation of Your Growth

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sat, 27 May 2023 20:00:29 GMT

Managing time isn’t always easy but if you identify your mission you will have all the motivation you need to stay on track.

If you live long enough you will inevitably be late to an important date, or even worse, miss it entirely. We often forget about appointments and meetings because we are already stressed out about other priorities. If we further go on to miss a date, the anxiety can become unbearable for some.

The worst thing you can do is let one mistake take away your entire opportunity or job. Instead of saying “sorry” and nervously pretending as if it did not happen, take responsibility. Most importantly, do not walk away and never look back. Instead, find the root cause of your untimeliness and make goals to improve this characteristic about yourself. With the help of an example scenario, I will walk you through the dynamics of time management and help you figure out why your own has fallen short.

SCENARIO:

A well-established contractor is late to meet potential customers and completely missed his appointment with subcontractors waiting to start on another job. As a result, the potential customers decide to go with another bid and the subcontractors he neglected no show the next day.

1. Actions speak louder than words. Take accountability.

The contractor needs to communicate his respect and gratitude for the customer and subcontractor’s time. He should also respond with a meaningful and vulnerable apology.

Perhaps the most important factor in time management is respect for other people’s time. Being late or missing appointments can significantly impact how others view us because if you cannot keep your word, people stop depending on you. This is a tough issue to rehabilitate unless you are willing to be vulnerable and take accountability. If you fail to do this, people will begin to treat you as inferior and your future opportunities can be halted. When you accidentally forget about someone, they might respond by intentionally forgetting about you. We often don’t value others time until we need it and this selfish dynamic can put a wrench in interpersonal communications and prevent growth within a business or person. Whether you’re a boss or an employee, respecting each other’s time is crucial for both of your wheels to keep turning.

If you miss a date or show up late, you’ve wasted someone else’s time and an adequate apology is in store. Be direct in taking accountability and assure that it will not happen again. Even if it was partly their fault, take it on the nose and move forward. Disrespect will take you to a dead end and time management is the foundation of respect between two people.

If you want to establish your limits for time then be transparent about your schedule. Make your schedule available to others to help express how valuable your own time is and encourage them to share their own schedule with you in return. Being open about schedules can cut out the trial and error stage and set the ground for people to have mutual understandings of other’s lives.

2. Why are you lacking time management skills?

What was the contractor preoccupied with? Was his schedule over packed or did he forget because he simply did not care? The contractor needs to reevaluate his mission and goals within his business and find out why motivation and self-discipline are lacking. If his schedule is overwhelming, then it’s time to re-prioritize commitments.

We have to want to be on time and show up. We have a lot of expectations on us that we need to acknowledge but in the end, we will only do what feels good. This is human nature. If we are not aligned with the mission of our business or job, then we might lack time management simply because we are not determined to focus on it. In all the businesses I have managed, I found that people who were not determined in their position were the same ones failing to commit to time. In other words, they did not have the passion for what was expected of them.

It’s important to dig deep and find the root cause of our lacking motivation. Even with all the best tools and coaching, if our heart isn’t in it then they are useless. We must be excited and have a vision of exactly what we want to accomplish. If you feel your schedule is overwhelming, think about whether it’s overbooking or your lack of excitement for the tasks at hand. Prioritize what needs to be done and accept that it won’t always be fun but might be necessary to reach your goal. Keeping your end goal in mind will give you the motivation to get over the hurdles that are not so enjoyable. If we do not have an end goal then where will the determination stem from?

I highly suggest reading my blog “ Working For Your Life Purpose ” to help define what your mission is and make sure you are aligned with this mission in everything you do.

Link: https://www.doughauptman.com/working-for-your-life-purpose

3. What resources are available to you?

The contractor should reflect on how he manages time. Does he make mental notes or physically write appointments down? Does he lose his notes often? Is it time to make digital notes? Or is his own self-discipline to stay focused what’s lacking? He must determine if his time management skills are working and take initiative if they are not.

As technology advances, we run out of reasons for not being punctual. In addition to phones and alarm clocks we now have apps, smart watches, and even AI products to help keep us on track. Business owners in particular should keep up with these tools and avoid becoming an outlier. Make it easy for people to understand and work with your schedule so mutual respect can develop. Apps are a great tool for time management because they cannot be lost and offer many different options for notifications such as emails, texts, and even phone calls. The most popular scheduling apps are Calendly, Appointlet, Zoho, Google, Trello, and Basecamp. Personally, I enjoy using Google Calendar and Basecamp because they are easy to use and readily available.

You can also utilize a life coach, such as myself, for improving your punctuality. Time management is something every life coach is seasoned in and they can serve as a third party help you learn about scheduling and organizing commitments. They can also help you identify your flaws and improve your dependability with others.

However, whether you have a life coach or every scheduling app available, your self-discipline will still be the most important factor. You must fully commit to your goals and no one can force you to do that but your own determination. The benefit of a life coach is that I can help you both identity your mission and manage your time accordingly.

4. How does this undependable behavior impact your business?

The contractor needs to understand how these mishaps are harming his business. His reputation can be damaged if he does not make the situation right which will lead to less jobs and scarce contracts with subcontractors to complete them.

Missing appointments and failing to show up will destroy our business or career before it ever begins. Businesses hire managers specifically to organize dates and times with the objective being leadership. Without them, a company would not run smoothly. This same dynamic can be applied to your own life and career. Without mutual respect for others and their time, we will not have positive relationships which are a staple of consumerism, business, and personal success. Additionally, if people lack respect for us then our growth is at a standstill.

Take the initiative to get control over your time management and set your business or career up for optimum success with its mission. You’ll be glad you did!

How I Brought California Diversity to Georgia Business

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Wed, 24 May 2023 22:16:53 GMT

Born in California

I was born at Vandenburg Airforce Base in Lompoc, Santa Cruz County, California. My parents lived in Los Angeles for a while before moving the new family to the San Francisco Bay Area. My formidable years in Oakland gave me close exposure with UC Berkeley and San Francisco, both were arguably the center of the Cultural Revolution of the 60’s and 70’s.

My parents were part of the first generation to break away from the old school “father knows best” mentality. They instead adopted a socially liberal lifestyle and they fit the image of the pot smoking, drinking, leather wearing, incense burning, earthy people of the area at that time. It started with love and peace but later turned to sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. For all its faults, this was a generation where people of all races and cultures aspired to live together as one in love, peace, and freedom.

Colorblind in Oakland

In the late 60s San Francisco Bay Area, my parents exercised very open race relations such that I was raised to be colorblind. My parents, who would be divorced and remarried, intermittently dated and cohabitated with people of different races. They also had friends of all different races and cultures, so they never put much attention to skin color. My parents gave us the teachings of MLK, and as a result, I look at a person’s heart and only their heart. Up until 1999, I truly felt the country was going in a good direction and that soon racism would be entirely exterminated.

Although my parents were always partying, I was born naturally smart and was lucky in school. I was never the smartest but my education was exceptional because of the merit system. There was no diversity quota. If I had not been bused or gone to school in the bay area, I know I would not be as successful and experienced as I am today.

When I started elementary school in the late 60s, Proposition 13 was in full swing and gaining steam in the Bay area. The proposition was still controversial in some parts of the U.S. but it was mostly accepted there. In today’s world, politicians like Biden-Harris continue to advocate against this merit based system. To better explain the benefits of this proposition, I will discuss my experience being bused to Lakeview Elementary, which was located many miles away from the Skyline area of Oakland where we lived at the time.

In the original proposition, a program was designed to rank all children based solely off of test scores which were determined by IQ testing. This was called the Mentally Gifted Program (MGF). The top scoring children were placed in classrooms with curriculums that were designed specifically for their high IQ.

The cutoff IQ score to join the MGF was 130. To put this into perspective, Steve Jobs has a score of 160 and Albert Einstein scored between 160-190, although news articles mostly reported Einstein at 160. Any score of 135 or higher is placed in the top 1%, or in other words, the 99th percentile of the population. My IQ was 134 at the time and hopefully still is!

The advanced classes put in place by the Mentally Gifted Program only made up 0.3% of the total student body and the brightest and smartest students could be found within them. At Lakeview Elementary only one of these advanced classes existed within the school. This happened to be Mrs. Shapiro’s 6th grade classroom, where I was enrolled.

Hard Work Has No Color

At the time, the demographic of Oakland was approximately 95% African American, 3% Caucasian, and the rest were Asian American and Hispanics. When looking at these demographic percentages, most would assume that the majority of my classmates were African Americans, however they were not. As you can see in my classroom photograph, most of my fellow classmates were Asian Americans but there was a wide range of Caucasian, Hispanic, and African American students too. Consider all the factors above, and you can see that race and genetics had absolutely nothing to do with classroom merit.

Asian American children made up much of the advanced classroom, despite their low demographics percentage, because their families valued education and had high expectations for grades and hard work. They encouraged their children to succeed in every way possible and this determination was ingrained within the Asian culture at the time.

On the other hand, although African Americans made up 95% of the demographics, they did not make up the majority of advanced classrooms. This had nothing to do with their abilities and everything to do, again, with culture and family. African American children who wanted to succeed in their education were often singled out with harassment, bullying, and shame. Some of this abuse even came from within their own families. This tragedy still exists today and can be seen when the data and statistics are analyzed objectively.

Even with the factors of race and genetics left out, the advanced classroom at Lakeview was still completely multicultural. My classmates and I developed amazing bonds with one another and I cannot say there is a finer group of people anywhere. In the photo below, you can see one student with an afro. His name was Rodger and we were best friends. Other classmates even nicknamed us “ Oreo cookie ” because, well you can figure this one out!

My elementary school held quite a few reunions over the years but I haven’t made it to one yet. The majority of my classmates lived on to have successful careers and not one of them became a socialist as far as I know. Race was never the focal point yet we all experienced equality and earned success in the end. I grew up in a diverse environment, and even 50 years later, I think of all of them fondly. Politicians these days have no idea what it means to grow up culturally diverse and what equality truly means in America.

Today’s Classrooms

Today, we can see new quota systems put in place at schools that ensure diversity, but not success and hard work. The issue at hand is that students are placed simply by their race and not their productivity. The result is students only progress because of their demographic and not because they earned it above others. Instead of placing children solely based off skin color, we should have focused on the factors that are preventing students of all colors from succeeding.

The cultural factors, which I mentioned above, consist of strong families and their determination to put education first. The narrative of politicians, such as Biden-Harris, is that classrooms would be largely Caucasian if a merit system existed. However, stories like mine demonstrate that a merit based classroom will still be largely diverse regardless of the demographics of the area.

Today, Asian Americans continue to rank at the top of education and these students also have the highest rate of two parent households. Family, acceptance, and educational standards are what will ensure the next generation is successful. From hard work, and not skin color, will the most positive outcomes be achieved.

For good reading on this topic I encourage you to read some Shelby Steele: t.ly/2y8A.

Another good read is The Diversity Delusion by Heather MacDonald.

After sixth grade, the Mentally Gifted Program experiment was finished because Proposition 13, at the time, only allowed for these types of sophisticated and advanced education tactics within the sixth grade. This was truly a shame because it was absolutely very successful. How many sixth-grade elementary school classes do you know that still hold reunions? Nevertheless, busing continued. I was first bused to Bret Harte Junior High School and later to McChesney Junior High School. Both schools were located in tough parts of town and far from my home.

Mayhem, Mischief, and Lessons Learned

What happened next was traumatic for me. There is no way around it, I admit that I had become a gang banger and it was the peer pressure that got me to that point. I experienced significant racism as a young white boy which resulted in me getting daily beatings, harassment, and falling victim to crimes throughout the beginning of my 7th grade year. People also stole money from me and I was even sexually assaulted at one point. It wasn’t long until I was eventually beat into a gang.

I coped with this by learning how to fight, becoming a fast runner, and settling in with a group that was not accepted by mainstream gangs at the time. Strength was found in numbers and my gang included a couple white guys, a couple Asian guys, four black guys, and one Hispanic. We hung out together mostly for protection, but we also developed a strong bond and got into all sorts of mischief. This included, but was not limited to, stealing old people’s Social Security money after payday, ripping off liquor stores, and other misdemeanors and general mayhem.

I think it's important to say that I am not proud of this part of my life, and I am certain that I developed PTSD because of the beatings and the things that I witnessed, some of which were so gruesome that I will not put them to ink here.

Suffice it to say that when God has his hands on you and things get to be their very worst, he can do miracles. This is what He did for me. If I had stayed there, I am certain that I would have ended up dead or in prison, or probably both.

Pony Boy in San Diego

When I turned 16 years old, my family moved to San Diego where things were much different. The people there were significantly more divided than back in my hometown of Oakland. Instead of predominantly African American students, at Monte Vista High School in Spring Valley CA, there were mostly Caucasian and Hispanic students with few African Americans. Since I was accustomed to Oakland and most of my actual friends were mainly Black and Asian, I had a difficult time befriending other people.

I remember reading The Outsiders in the 7th grade because I identified with the greasers in the story. I did not care for who I thought to be the socs in school and instead joined in with the Hispanics and dated women from all sorts of cultural backgrounds. I also made use of the fighting I learned from Oakland gangs because, as a white guy dating mainly Hispanic girls, I found myself attracting conflict. However, this never stopped me from dating who I wanted to. Needless to say, I was out of place and experienced some social shock in my new environment.

I played a variety of sports but still I maintained the label of a stoner. However, the football head coach didn’t let me play football mainly because of this reputation even though I was the fastest and best wide receiver there. I was denied the positive social experience I would have almost certainly enjoyed had I played football.

Then my life took another turn for the worse as my parents ended up divorcing once and for all. My father had an affair with the mother of one of my fellow classmates and this lead to a bloody fight between us. I ended up sitting in a pool of blood with all of my things packed into my Toyota truck. He took the house keys and that was when I came to the realization that I was officially on my own. This was 1978 and at the tender age of 17, I was all alone in the world.

Never one to quit or give up, I struggled to put myself back in school again and ended up withdrawing to pursue my GED during my senior year. I was unable to finish my diploma because I was busy trying to find a job and pay my own rent. I did however pass the GED and have a high school equivalency certificate.

After finally getting my first apartment, things began to settle down for a little while. I enrolled myself at Grossmont Community College and eventually completed 2.5 years of education while living on my own. I had left right before I was about to complete an associate’s degree in business administration and a minor in psychology, with additional emphasis on political science. During this time, while I was attempting to earn the degree, I had to sleep in my van on occasion, finding myself homeless between various sales jobs, until landing my first good sales job at 19 years old.

I landed a great sales job selling photocopier toner and computer printer ribbons to corporations. During the late 70s, computers were a huge hit and it seemed that suddenly everyone wanted a computer, leaving a huge window for commission sales. By the time I was 20, I was making $20k per month from commissions alone. I was significantly good at business-to-business sales and it seemed my pockets were lined with more money than I knew what to do with at that time.

Flying High in Orange County

By 1980, I took my new skill set and moved to Orange County. I was hired on at Centon Electronics selling semi-conductors. I made even more money at this endeavor, soaring into the millions. At this time, I was flying high as a highly paid sales executive, living in Newport Beach, riding in limos, and buying copious amounts of cocaine and concert tickets. I had no idea how to function in the real world yet, but I was exceptional at selling things and this led to some great opportunities as well as some really big temptations.

I was caught in the perfect storm of success driven by a deep desire to never be homeless again and some deep-rooted psychological issues from my gang banger days in Oakland. I suspect that most of my dysfunction during this time period was from the PTSD I suffered and I still suffer from it to this very day after having survived the ordeal.

I thought that I had everything I wanted but could not avoid the feeling that something was missing. I dated beautiful women, including a top billing stripper at the Cheetah Men’s Club in Orange County. I met up with her along the highway one day in my Vette. She sped by me in a beefed up Firebird and we raced along until I motioned her to pull into a rest area and you might imagine the rest. My life was a nonstop party but no amount of cocaine or beautiful women could fulfill the gaping hole I felt deep within my spirit.

By 1985, my Corvette led me to befriending the auto detailer, a man named Carey, at the car wash on Beach & Warner in Huntington Beach. He in turn led me to Jesus and this led to the start of my born-again transformation. I started to attend Calvary Church in Costa Mesa, where Chuck Smith was the head pastor, where much of the evangelical movement started. Great evangelists such as Greg Laurie and Raul Ries, to name just a couple, were part of the Calvary movement.

Raul Ries, then Pastor of Calvary in Rowland Heights, CA, is the author of From Fury to Freedom, which I highly suggest everyone read. This book, also made into a movie, tells a story that is unforgettable and life changing for the reader. Raul’s name stands for fear, for fighting, and for fury. In his childhood, his classmates referred to him as violent and rebellious and his family labeled him a “ time bomb ” ready to explode at any time. This was a notion that I would soon come to experience myself in the near future. In Vietnam, those who fought by his side claimed that he was an “ angry, bitter kille r”.

As time went on, Raul developed into a violent martial arts hoodlum who eventually found himself at the end of a very long road. Raul put a shotgun to his head with the full intention of pulling the trigger and ending his life for good. However, right in that moment, a sermon from Chuck Smith began to play on the TV. Chuck’s invitation to accept the Lord released Raul’s finger from the trigger and started him down an entirely new path, a path that would save his life and put him on a new journey with God’s protection and guidance.

Raul took this realization and centered his entire being on it. He became one of the most renowned pastors within the Calvary movement and has changed many lives for the better including my own. But this journey wasn’t simple for me either as I found myself toying with death and lacking any answers to the meaning of my life.

Baptized in the Pacific Ocean

By 1987 like Raul Ries had before me, I was heading down the road to perdition. One afternoon, I took my head turning Corvette and jumped onto the highway for an appointment in Los Angeles. I was speeding at 120 mph and I was listening to a sermon on the Christian radio station KWAV. The sermon was about accepting Jesus and asking Him for signs. Pastor Chuck, as we called him, went on to teach that if you are seeking the Lord and you know the Lord is calling you, yet you cannot seem to wrap your head around it, then it’s okay to ask for a sign. I soon came to find out, a sign was about to sweep right through my existence.

As I was racing down the highway just past Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, high on cocaine, Jesus sent me a sign that I could not deny. I was running late, had been partying too hard, and knew right then and there that my life was on a collision course. I felt hopeless and even helpless. In that moment, I heard Pastor Chuck say “if you are lost and just need a sign, just ask for it, He will show you the way.” So I said out loud, “Dear Lord, I really need you right now, please show me you are real, please show me a sign.”

At that very instant is when I saw a semi-truck blow a tire on the highway just a quarter mile ahead. I saw the cab drop, and jack knife oncoming traffic. I immediately thought that the situation was very bad, and my adrenaline went sky high. The semi started smoking, the tires were ripping up, and cars were dodging it left and right. This life-threatening crash was like a scene from Fast & Furious because I drove straight through it without slowing down. I really had no time to react or do anything, it happened so fast!

How did I drive right through this without getting blown up or killed? It was so dramatic that I thought I might have hallucinated the entire situation. Then it dawned on me that I had just asked for a sign, and if ever there was a sign, this had to be it! This was my moment of conversion. I knew right then and there that God and Jesus were real and nothing could possibly convince me otherwise.

Following this realization, I started to regularly attend church and was baptized at Dana Point in the Pacific Ocean just 3 months later. I made the choice to dry up, get off of drugs and put an end to my party lifestyle. It didn’t happen overnight but took many years for me to get sober. My entire perspective changed for the better after I found Christ and was validated by my near death experience on highway 5 just past Oceanside.

Corruption, Yuppies, and My Exit

Today, I am grateful for growing up in California because I would not be who I am today without my experiences. As I continued to sober up and make changes to my lifestyle, I also saw changes happening within the golden state. California was becoming less and less culturally rich and more centered around money and fame. Everyone started wanting to look good and have their pockets full. People wanted to become celebrities and paid attention to where they ate, how much money they made, and how well dressed they could be. This superficial trend is what led to the term “yuppies”. A yuppy was most likely a southern Californian who was shallow and rich, focused only on materialistic values. I knew in my heart that this wasn’t the place for me anymore but it wouldn’t be until another journey through the riches that I decided to up and go.

I started working in internet consultation at US Web as a lead business analyst and while the income was great, my eyes were opened to just how corrupt the corporate world of California really was. I once went to a meeting in Irvine with AOL’s project management team and discovered that the data centers were located mostly in residential houses, not data centers, and CDs were transferred in the mail. I knew then that they were cooking the books because there was no way that the business model they were running could ever be sustainable nor profitable. I ended up leaving US Web because they, among many other tech and financial firm of that day, aided and abetted AOL in what would later be the catalyst of the dot com bubble and subsequent crash on 2000-2001. They lied about their actual profits to cover up that they were losing copious amount of money. They did all of the advertising and in 1999 they held a public offering to raise their stock so high that they could leverage the hostile takeover of Time Warner. In 2001, an investigation actually proved that they had lied about 5 billion dollars in losses! The write down illegally treated the sky high marketing costs as a long term asset on the books! Without this money, they would have never been able to buy Time Warner.

It was a total sham and resulted in thousands of seniors losing their retirement funds and turning to Social Security. They ended up having to keep AOL as an entity until they sold it to the Huffington Post in 2011. This was hardly a slap on the wrist. I ended up quitting and choosing to no longer partake in the scandal I became all too familiar with.

By 1999, I was officially born again and no longer just a sellout. My prospects were much lower because I refused to conform to the corruption and superficial environment. I was disillusioned, divorced, lonely, and knew I needed to keep making changes.

Soon enough, I was given another sign. My mother called me from Georgia and asked me to come help my grandmother who was not physically well at the time. She could hardly get to the bathroom and insurance was not helping in the slightest. This was my sign to move. On August 12th, 1999 I officially left California and my new journey was about to begin in Georgia!

Making Roots in Georgia

I remember the day I left California as if it happened yesterday. I was driving a Cutlass that was on its last leg and I only had $682.91 to my name, with my credit ruined. I remember watching the temperature needle go up every time I would drive uphill and the engine steaming. I had to go 30 mph just to prevent the car from overheating on me. I realized that I was no longer flying high in my corvette and was instead bumping along the unknown. I had barely made it to Georgia but the Lord got me there safely.

Although the trip was challenging, I know this was one of the best choices I could have made. When I got to Georgia, I had already acquired skills in business and was ready to put them to use. The benefit was that Georgia had much less competition than California. I started coding HTML and within two years I was making over $500.00 per day. Despite making good money, the first year was really challenging. I lived with my mother and aunt at the time and had a side job as a salesperson for Phil Meek. To my surprise, most of my clients acquired in California stuck with me, even from a distance. Life was finally going in the direction I had always wanted but this time it had meaning, the factor missing from my California memories.

From that point in time until now, I have been steadily building a family and multiple businesses. There have been challenges, but it has been a great time. My experiences in California shaped the husband, father, and businessman I am today.

Recently, my youngest daughter Mali left for college, and it brought up a lot of feelings within me. She told me she was scared to leave because she had lived in our house her entire life. This reminded me that I grew up without roots or stability. If I had never left California, I most likely would have never put down roots for a family either. The change of environment allowed me to make a stable lifestyle and raise a family. I thank the Lord for this blessing.

Gratitude and Equality

Today, I am grateful for both my journey in California and my landing in Georgia. I used the knowledge I gained in Cali to create something new and unifying in Atlanta. It really saddened me to see the community here divided over class and race. People segregated themselves at church and even where they shopped and hung out. I wasn’t used to seeing this after living so long in Cali with diversity in every direction. I realized that prejudice and racism was indeed alive and well right in front of me.

I decided to incorporate my California experiences here in Georgia by advocating for diversity within my own business and demonstrating that people of all ethnicities can work together to create a unified community. Currently, all my tenants at Mimosa Salon Suites are African American. I successfully made the first salon suites business in Georgia and I am proud to be with people of all colors working hand in hand. The majority of our social media embraces diversity and strives to get the message of unity across to the public. I went against the grain of the culture here and brought my 60s California energy into the mix.

I became the complete opposite of what I was in California and devoted my career to social justice by way of entrepreneurship. But even in my new ventures, I thank the Lord for the journey he put me on and all that I learned as a result.

Reflecting on My Journey

When I look back on my journey, I reflect on exactly what it means to have roots versus living without them. I realized that you can always travel and experience new environments but you only get one shot to establish roots. If you establish roots first, then you will always have a home base to return to. If you are thinking about starting over, then most likely you have hit rock bottom in life and that’s ok. You have nowhere to go but up and it’s never too late to create a foundation for change.

One person I especially look up to and relate to is Elon Musk. He moved his entire business to Texas, not because he had to, but because he wanted to. It was personal to him, just as it was for me. He refused to remain in California, surrounded by corruption and greed. One quote that I can relate to is:

“Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”

Remember to stay open to new opportunities that come your way and look for healthy ways to live. Find your purpose, establish a mission, and move forward. And don’t forget to always look for signs from the Lord because He will always point you in the right direction when you feel lost.

Additional Information:

Insight on bussing and merit based schooling: https://www.thefreevoter.com/insights-busing

Finding your life purpose: https://www.doughauptman.com/working-for-your-life-purpose

Link to “ From Fury to Freedom ” book: https://www.amazon.com/Fury-Freedom-Raul-Ries/dp/0890815372

We Are Born With the Instinct to be Independent

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sat, 20 May 2023 02:45:26 GMT

Independence is a sacred gift from God that must be cherished.

Independence is not something that can be taught. Independence is a natural instinct that we all possess; it’s the urge to roam, be free, and not take orders. All humans are born this way. Whether or not you can break or train a human out of this instinct, is quite debatable. It might be possible under specific circumstances but history has proven that independence has managed to always make it’s way through because it simply is in our nature.

You would have to be raised in a completely controlled and restricted environment in order to not be independent. But even then, you could only be docile to a certain point. Some part of us, at the bottom of our souls, we would still crave independence despite never tasting it before. We do not have to learn independence, we just need to be able to experience it.

A Gift From God

The notion of independence is not a lesson but rather something that we can be in awe of in relation to the human spirit. God gifted us this ability. Hemmingway helped me understand this concept as well as the ancient Greeks. Found in his book "East of Eden" is the word “timshel” which literally translates in ancient Greek from Arabic, to mean that God gave man the gift to have a free will and the ability to decide between good and evil. God gave us the gift of independent thinking and being. He gave us the gift of thought and choice.

Since the beginning of time, before any writing was on shell or rock, timshe l validates that freedom is a gift from God. This is impossible to contradict. People can be ignorant of the history and religion relating to who we are and how we develop, but the reality is that independence is born into us from the start.

Let Children Be

I do not believe that there is a way to teach a child independence. The way to respect their journey, is to simply allow them to have independence naturally. We can support them in having frequent doses of independence by giving them assignments of responsibility.

Rather than call this learning, I think of it as more of a safe guarding of their sacred right deep within their being. This is the sacred right the God gave them and this notion is something we can help them understand through modeling and explaining biblical steps. Children need to understand that God is the source of all good things. We can also teach them to recognize the feeling of independence and encourage them to want it while also taking caution to boundaries and so forth. So the question is not how to teach children independence but rather how to we help children feel independence and provide support such as self-sacrifice, responsibilities, etc.

Limit Judgment

While on this topic, I want to bring attention to how important it is that we do not pass judgment on our children for the choices they make. A motto that I have used with children is that bad thoughts don’t exist, only bad actions. If we are overly critical of someone, we can inadvertently harm their natural tendency to experience their own independence which can lead to significant harm. When you are continuously negative to someone, their natural reaction is to curl up, get nervous with self-doubt, and not say anything at all. As parents, we do not want to ever make our children feel doomed to judgment.

A Generation of Dependents

If you raise a child to be solely dependent, then you are committing a sin because your job is to make them independent so they can care for themselves. Today, kids are so dependent on their parents that they eventually find themselves having a hard time do to break free and enjoy their own independence. Parents are the enabler in this scenario. Massive scores within my generation, and the one following it, were raised in the post-civil rights and hippy era. For many adults, the only purpose in life became to be a good mom. This lead to soccer and PTA moms and a generation where all kids received a trophy.

This generation is much more fixated on babying children and the consequences developed quickly. For example, parents have become extremely sheltering when it comes to playing outside and being exposed to germs. As a result, many children have developed severe allergies from lack of exposure. It’s as if people’s utopian mindsets became nowhere near the reality of the scientific facts about what we need in order to be healthy humans.

We need to be outside more and exposed to all sorts of microorganisms, bacteria, viruses, and fresh air. The sheltering over children has really become quite ridiculous. Personally, I always wanted to teach my kids to be self-sufficient enough to be able to survive in the middle of the forest alone. If a nuclear holocaust happened, a lot of parents would be panicking over how independent their children really are. Obviously this is a dramatized scenario but my point is that we will not always be around for our children to fall back on. My daughter is a complete badass that cannot be messed with. She is strong minded and sometimes I am confronted with my own self when I come up against her. However, this makes me incredibly proud that she is her own person and I feel peace knowing that she values her independence.

If we do choose to shelter our children, then they will fail to learn beneficial responsibility and independence. This can lead to drug addictions, excessive reliance on video games, and other things that zombie down their creativity and passion. When kids and young adults use these unhealthy outlets, deep down they are crying to be free.

Why Family is Vital

Of course, there is one exception when it comes to depending on one another. Children need to be able to count on their relationship with God, themselves, and their families. They should never think that they can count on anything outside of that. Church, government, and sometimes even spouses, are things we cannot always count on but we can seek support from. Family needs to be a significant part of the ethos of training and teaching independence. All the children in my life know that they can always come to me and I will always instill this support to them.

Thinking Like a Leader

The best business people are independent thinkers. If you cannot think on your own, you cannot be a leader and therefore will not be able to build a successful enterprise. Do not try to become an entrepreneur if you refuse to think independently because you will be incompatible with the environment and expectations. There is no successful businessperson that reached great heights from following. Even in corporations, titles such as “VP” do not appreciate independent thought like they imply. They require people to follow a specific ideology of what to do, putting them right into a box.

One saying I enjoy using is:

“Do you want to be a small fish in a big fish tank, or a big fish in a small pond?”

On a broader scale, you can see tremendous negativity that comes when you limit a group of people’s freedom and independence. Eventually, communism can take root in such an environment. Communism is codependency in its purest form. In order for this system to survive, it has to eliminate free thinking and all independent thought. Think “beehive mentality” and you’ll get the picture.

Why a Life Coach Cannot Make You Independent

Like I mentioned above, independence cannot be taught because it’s more of a spiritual journey within someone. Many life coaches have canned techniques and plans and processes and programs to help people but being independent is something someone must choose to do for themselves. If you were raised sheltered and reliant on others then it will be more difficult to break free from that dependent thinking as an adult. If this struggle is severe, then I highly suggest speaking to a therapist.

I also suggest reading for more understanding and knowledge. One book I really enjoyed is, “The Road Less Traveled”. This book is a timeless and wonderful piece that teaches a person about all of the things that are important for living a happy and healthy independent life.

I can also help people become self-sufficient by becoming successful at things they love to do and making an income and supporting their lifestyle. Self-sufficiency is a critical ingredient and while it doesn’t teach independence, it helps you gain individuality and the tools to have an independent life.

Bursting The Bubble of Easy Success

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Thu, 18 May 2023 00:03:04 GMT

Success is not easy, but prosperity will come from it.

" Success", a seven-letter word that has driven everyone crazy.

Individuals from nearly every sector set their eyes on emerging as a top-notch personality. They go to unprecedented lengths and are ready to undertake any austerity to reach the ultimate bar of success. Success is robust and holds the propensity to attract individuals to work their hearts out and become something substantive.

However, success seekers often believe that success comes easy. On the contrary, the reality is the exact opposite. Success is something that does not come easy. One has to make back-breaking efforts to taste the luxuries of success and prosperity. They have to toil and work hard to make their name in the respective industry.

A blend of thrilling personality traits is the requisite required to emerge as a rip-roaring entrepreneur, artist, or whatever one desires to become. Ranging from patience to perseverance, hard and smart work, dedication, and passion are a few characteristics worth the mention. The road to success is full of thorns, and one has to fall many times before reaching a sky-high level.

A prime example of someone who has worked with all their heart and soul to attain success is the thrilling entrepreneur Douglas Hauptman. Based in the state of Georgia, Douglas has proved to the world that working consistently, and not deviating from your objective, can lead you to achieve anything you desire.

Douglas practices multiple vocations, including business and software developing, industry developing, acting, real estate, and political activism. Furthermore, he is running numerous startup companies. He is the CEO of AMARCO , an acronym for American MARketing COmpany, founded by Douglas L. Hauptman Jr. Here he develops innovative marketing solutions that combine best breed print and digital solutions. He is also the CEO of another American marketing company, AtlantaWebsites.com . Both of these companies provide excellent marketing techniques and the demeanor necessary to up your business game.

Douglas is also the managing member of Realty Venture Group LLC dba Mimosa Salon Suites . These suites are leased to beauty professionals including hairstylists, estheticians, all-natural nail technicians, and massage therapists. He is also the managing director of Beauty Bar Med Spain Covington, GA , one of his startup companies focusing on beauty. He is also the managing director of Beauty Restoration Spa , a full-service laser med spa.

His professional attributes extend to being the webmaster, server administrator, and internet marketing manager at Sportaid/Mediad division of SRG., Inc . They have developed an eCommerce system with complex options in X-Cart and have fully integrated it into Georgia via GTM. They are currently improving efficiency by developing EDI processes. Sportaid is a great place to work! Moreover, Douglas is the founder of Newton County Learning , where they teach business students practical internet marketing skills to help them achieve success through innovation and technology.

Douglas is a living example for those working like a trojan to relish the pleasures of success. His passionate personality advocates amongst the masses that one should remain focused and not let themselves drop low during their journey of success. One should primarily believe in success first before working to attain it.

Confronting the Barriers Behind a Successful Entrepreneurship

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sun, 14 May 2023 19:25:59 GMT

If you want to become your own boss, you still have to put in the work too.

The idea of being the CEO of your own business can sound very tempting – you can choose what kind of goods you want to sell, the people you want to work with, and you do not have to listen to anyone when you are in charge. Yet, there is a surprising number of entrepreneurs who quit in their first year of business.

You cannot have all the benefits without putting in the effort to gain them. These efforts can sometimes be very taxing on business people, especially those that are still new to the professional world. Consequently, many people quit simply because their expectations were torn apart by reality and they did not have the patience to wait and see where their struggles would have reaped the fruit.

Now that makes one wonder – how have the highly acclaimed entrepreneurs achieved their current success? To answer that, let us consider the business journey of Douglas Lloyd Hauptman Jr. – an English personal life coach, revered entrepreneur, realtor, political activist, businessman, and software developer.

Hauptman Jr.'s business journey began at the young age of seven with a lemonade stand in California. Then, after gaining the necessary business skills he needed over the years, he started his first startup, AtlantaWebsites.com . This is a website development services company for businesses. The second was SEONow.us, which delivered search engine positioning services to small businesses. Quickly following behind was his third startup, AllAroundPool.us , which builds and repairs spas & swimming pools in the local area.

His experience has allowed him to be the ideal marketing and business consultant who aids small and middle-sized companies in implementing strategies to increase sales and growth. Over the years, he has established many businesses – and now uses his experience to guide aspiring businessmen on how they can effectively diminish the challenges that comes in an entrepreneurship journey.

The Financial Hesitation

Money has always been one of the main reasons why people in business hesitate when they think about starting their own careers. But what they do not realize is that you don't need to spend a lot of money on startups.

Stop thinking about getting a fancy office, an awesome office chair, or those four-colored glossy brochures. It does not take millions of dollars to start a business – try to keep your office space and business processes as frugal as possible. And once you have a stable flow of income, you can start thinking about upgrading your office.

Do Not Compromise on Time

Not having enough time is a major concern for many businessmen in our high-pressure modern world. That is why it is crucial to control how you manage your time on a regular basis.

To be a successful entrepreneur, you must understand that business startups require sacrifices through the proper use of mastering time. You might need to give up on going on vacations and put in extra hours of work, late in the night or early in the morning, to build up on the momentum that ensures speedy business success.

Business Icon Douglas Hauptman Shares Steps to Start Your Own Business

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sat, 13 May 2023 04:49:05 GMT

Doug shares 5 steps you can take to better shape your business !

If you have been considering starting a corporation for some time, stop letting your fears and worries keep you from making it a reality. Sure, it will necessitate plenty of work and quite a lot of stress, but the remuneration, both monetarily and spiritually, will be well worth the journey.

With an experienced splash of numerous years in business endeavors, Douglas Hauptman is a successful entrepreneur who can enlighten us on the essentials of business and what it takes to run a successful business while working on it. Douglas shares a brief insight into business strategies through which you can better shape your business.

Hauptman has been an inspiration for many. He has worked out to better position himself as a business consultant and shares the initial five strategies to start your own business.

Step 1: Develop Your Feasible Business Idea

A brief assessment to first see what the market is concerned about, what other companies you will be competing against, and how you can make a mark in a crowded market with something unique.

Step 2: Take Care of Branding

Now that you have decided on your business product, get your branding in place. Team up with a graphic designer who has experience creating

professional logos and one who can progress a website that will attract new clienteles.

Step 3: Get Your Plans in Place

You would not step into the woodland without a map, so why would you twitch a business without a plan? You will need both a company and a marketing plan, though neither has to be huge.

Your business plan should be an impression of your company, what you want to sell, and your approach to the business. Your marketing plan should include your target audience, the different channels you’ll use to reach them, and strategies for each individually.

Step 4: Test It All Out

If you are functioning as an ecommerce site, ask friends or colleagues to play around on your site to confirm everything works well. Pay special devotion to the checkout process, as it needs to be as efficient and straightforward as possible.

- Explore all links on your site to ensure they work promptly.

- Assess the checkout process to just 1-2 pages.

- Hold a soft launch event in your store to test run how the whole thing will work out.

Step 5: Do It

Waiting around for the perfect moment to unclutter the (real or virtual) doors on your business is pointless. Aim to generate a big squelch around your grand opening.

Inform local journalists about your grand opening and invite them for a tour.

Offer special concessions on your first days open.

Loudly speak about your social media labors with your promotion.

You will never be immaculate when you open your business, so consider it a learning process that will endure helping you progress as a business owner.

Grasp These Success-Driven Strategies For a Successful Business

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Wed, 10 May 2023 03:04:45 GMT

Readily shape your business with strategies suggested by entrepreneur Doug Hauptman.

Introduction

With an accomplished sprinkle of various years from business prosperity, Douglas Hauptman, a fruitful business personality, brightens us on business fundamentals and the strategies to maintain an effective industrialist while chipping away at it. Douglas seeks to share a concise knowledge of business procedures through which you can more readily shape your business.

Hauptman has been a motivation for quite some time now. He has worked hard to position himself as a business expert and offers the underlying success-driven strategies for a successful business. Let’s dive deep into each one below.

Business Plan

During the initial times, a business follows a road map in the shape of a business plan. This road map benefits managers in comprehending where the boundaries and limitations exist for their procedures and the goals for increasing business. Business plans also support owners and managers to obtain start-up funding or loans for their action plans since little to no economic history is available for these start-up businesses.

Finance Potentials

Businesses need to comprehend how they will fund their operations and where money will come from for future operations or growth. Adequately funding business processes is crucial to corporations since fixed cash payments can utterly damage a the cash flows. If companies use impartiality to finance their strategies, too much outstanding stock will lower the worth of company shares, forming little to no value for stockholders. Emerging a solid financial plan is vital for a business to succeed in the business market.

Market Niche

A marketing niche can conditionally on the victory of the business filling the slot. Market niches may also be as simple as reproducing an existing product or finding a new feature for an already widespread consumer good. Effecting a market prediction may help businesses absorb market niches and the possible route to satisfying these niches.

Market Strategy

Because each segment of a free market is diverse, companies must change overall business strategies to help them prosper in their element. Companies should analyze these market forces in their business industry or segment and see if they can develop robust procedures that will positively affect profits.

Company Culture

An imperative trait of a successful business is the organization’s culture. Company cultures are mostly consequential from the owner or business directors; they can interpret their vision to bosses and employees, creating a sense of employee ownership and inclination to succeed in their tasks. Owners can substitute their culture by using positive strengthening, performance bonuses, and team-building activities to foster employee loyalty.

Conclusion

Successful businesses result from creative strategies and the hard work of owners and managers. While companies are operating in diverse industries or competitive markets, certain basic business principles exist for generating a successful business. These elementary values are used to develop strategies that give executives goals and directions for attaining the best possible outcomes from their efforts. These business strategies contribute to creating a dominant company culture.

The Legacy of Life and Death

Tue, 09 May 2023 22:02:45 GMT

Legacy is your energy that goes on living through the next generation and beyond.

The Blue Butterfly

My mother was not an entrepreneur or business owner, like myself. She was a medicine woman, one with nature, and a loyalist to her Cherokee culture. Although I live an entirely different lifestyle than she had, I evolved with and around the legacy she left behind for me. Materialistic items and money have no meaning when compared to a spiritual connection and the evolution someone leaves behind with you for another lifetime. I wanted to tell the story of my mother, and the blue butterfly phenomena I experienced in relation to her passing, because legacy outweighs all other factors in our lives. Legacy will always remain, even after our bodies are laid to rest. Stories never die.

My mother spent a lifetime studying the Cherokee culture and just like anyone, she also had a darkness in her life too, alcohol. She and my father were both alcoholics and had heavy hands on us children at times. But aside from this darkness, was her light. This light she shined on me was her connection with nature. My mother had always studied her culture and in her later years she became a white-corn woman.

A white-corn woman is a woman who dresses in white furs and is considered a “medicine woman”. She was a healer and a purveyor of wisdom and history. She knew all there was to know about the healing properties of things from nature, and once healed me from a traumatic motorcycle injury. In a way, this made me a believer in nature’s gifts.

When I reminisce about my mother’s connection with the spiritual realm, I always think back to a specific memory of her and me in a meadow. We had been on a family camping trip when my mother reached for my hand and told me to come with her. We walked to the top of the hillside and overlooked the valley of tall grass and wildflowers.

She began talking to me about the people’s connection with nature and told me to close my eyes and listen. She told me to tell her what I could see. I was only 9 years old that afternoon but with my mother’s words and spirit guiding me, I became one with nature in that moment. I could see the fine details of the grass blades, the aphids crawling up and down, the chloroform running through nature’s veins. This was the legacy my mother left me with. I bonded with Mother Nature and that sensation never left my side.

In my adult years, my mother eventually passed on. It was just 10 days after her passing that I experienced my first encounter with the blue butterfly. I was sitting by the pool with my family when a blue butterfly started to fly around me. Eventually, it landed on my wrist. I thought this to be odd and I carefully shook it off, as I would not hurt even a fly.

A few days later, my wife and I were sitting on our deck visiting and a blue butterfly began to hover over me, again. It landed on my wrist and this time turned and seemed to look right at me. I felt in that moment that this butterfly was my mother. She visited me every spring and summer for years to

come. I would joke about this but in reality, I could feel her presence around me and it was comforting.

This encounter with the blue butterfly led me to evolve spiritually by the thought of life and death. I am a Christian and believe that Jesus was reincarnated, rose to heaven, and sent us the Holy Spirit. I always thought it to be important for spiritual people, such as my mother, to accept Christ so they could go on to be with Him in the afterlife. However, after her passing, her legacy left me with a different perspective on death. My connection with Mother Nature gave me a different conclusion for my own mothers passing.

I believe she was reincarnated as a butterfly and in a sense, stuck between worlds like a ghost is. The difference is, I genuinely believe she wanted to be reincarnated back onto this earth because of her relationship with nature and to watch over me. My mother taught me to be one with nature which is why I was able make this observation and connect the blue butterfly back to my mother’s soul. My thoughts about life evolved and my spirituality grew from there. However, I still pray that she finds her way to Him someday.

I wanted to discuss this legacy and theory of life and death because in a world growing so quickly with technology and material items, it’s important to remember that we also need to continue evolving spiritually. If we do not use, practice, and pass on our spirituality, it will not grow with us or more importantly, after us.

We need to constantly challenge ourselves spiritually because our legacy will be what we leave behind with family and will contribute to their growth as well and an infinite evolution of ever-changing connections. Our passion is printed in our DNA and has a burning desire to be expressed.

Ultimately, this passion and legacy will be left behind for the next generation. If we forget our spirituality and do not put our heart into the legacy we leave behind, then we leave the next generation with a blank canvas and no colors.

In relation to business, I want to express the importance of legacy because if you put your heart and soul into your work then the mission behind that work is a part of your legacy. Some questions you can ask yourself are:

• What will people remember about me?

• What impact will my business mission have on the next generation?

• Does my enterprise have a mission endeavor that will make the world a better place?

• Are the systems I put in place good enough to allow for innovation and keep the business relevant over the next 100 years?

These are questions you must ask yourself if you want to continue to evolve and grow. If you can pinpoint the legacy you wish to leave behind, your passion can take the reins of your business and make it inevitably soar. Do everything with a purpose and the intention of making your enterprise a world-class organization. Never give up on your dream, never stop pushing, and never stop reaching for the heavens!

Just a week before writing this article, I was washing my car on a nice sunny day and a yellow butterfly landed on my hand. I had soap everywhere and carefully helped it back into flight. I told it to leave me alone because I didn’t want it to accidentally get hurt. This butterfly was twice the size of the blue butterfly that had followed me for 7 years and it was bright yellow. I believe this was my mother reaching a higher state just as I am by telling you about her legacy now. She was finally able to move on because she knew that I was going to be okay on my own.

So you see, the legacy we leave behind will outweigh anything else because it remains in our spirit and leads us through life with a purpose and meaning. My mother helped me understand people’s role in this world. As cohabitants, we should care for each other and all of Mother Nature and respect the ah of what we are. My mother’s legacy left an impact on my success because she gave me determination to leave behind my own legacy with my children, her grandchildren.

I learned from a young age that material fortune isn’t what’s important and meaningful, but rather the stories and lessons we pass on to be told generation after generation. I want to leave my children with the same respect I was taught to have for nature and people. The financial success is only an additional support so that my children can have an even bigger impact than myself.

Money can easily run out, but stories do not because legacy is much more powerful. I often ponder, “ why are we here and is there a God ”? I find myself always coming back to the notion of love and remembering that love is the strongest energy and force that we can express as humans. We can harness this love energy and use it for the better by loving everyone around us, our country, and ourselves. Imagine being a man on the moon, imagine being God for one day. Now, look down at the earth at the billions of people.

Look at the good deeds and the bad, look at the wars and the peace. Take this image into your heart and love it all at once. I believe the true evolution of the human spirit is to be able emit this harnessed love. By leaving a legacy to be passed down for many generations, we are making this energy even stronger and bringing people together.

If you can incorporate your legacy and passion into your work and success, the possibilities are endless because you will be at peace with your existence

and remembrance. A mission doesn’t need to be centered only on financial gain, it can be anything that you are passionate about.

Success is a broad term because what one person views as peace of mind could very well be another person’s taboo. For example, a doctor in a 3rd world country who barters medical cleft repair procedures in exchange for chickens can be equally impactful as a plastic surgeon performing face lifts in Los Angeles. Both doctors have completely different environments and fortunes but if these doctors are completing their mission in helping others feel good, then they are both equally successful.

Success must be a personal decision that you weigh and balance. We cannot let others decide our success for us, such as posting things on social media just to receive validations from others. The understanding you have in your heart will be what takes you far in life, not what is seen by others. You could have everything in the world, and still not be happy. I will leave behind everything in my heart, and more.

Cracking The Prime Peculiarity That Elevates Your Business

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Fri, 05 May 2023 02:59:50 GMT

Consistency will keep your business objectives the main target.

Every business leader desires to elevate their business to it's highest level. They want their trade to stand out and become the leading brand in the competitive consumer market. A skilled business person will always adopt a well-planned and strategic scheme to outstrip his competition and formulate into a top-notch business.

Out of the many things necessary to take your business to an exceptional height, one necessary peculiarity is 'consistency'. This practice, in plain words, refers to focusing on the current task while maintaining a long-term vision. This repetition of the same course of action helps the toiler stay streamlined, which is necessary to prevent deviation from one's prime objective and aim.

Consistency is widely demanded in business. Beginners often brush aside this and give up way too early because of no returns, rejection, and failure. However, the pursuit of consistently working towards your aim pulls off exceptional success in your respective niche and makes your business everything from nothing.

Based in the state of Georgia, Douglas Hauptman is a refined personality with top-notch expertise in the business world. He is a businessman, software developer, business developer, actor, realtor, and political activist. Through his consistent approach, this passionate entrepreneur has made a solid name in the world of commerce.

Douglas pursues multiple ventures and has achieved magnificent prosperity in each of them. The top-notch entrepreneur has various startup companies which are running smoothly. He is the CEO of AMARCO , an acronym for American MARketing COmpany , founded by Douglas L. Hauptman Jr. Here he develops innovative marketing solutions that combine best breed print and digital solutions. He is also the CEO of another American marketing company, AtlantaWebsites.com . Both of these companies provide excellent marketing techniques and demeanor to up your business game.

Douglas is also the managing member of Realty Venture Group LLC dba Mimosa Salon Suites . These suites are leased to beauty professionals including hairstylists, estheticians, all-natural nail technicians, and massage therapists. He is also the managing director of Beauty Bar Med Spain Covington, GA , one of his startup companies focusing on beauty. Furthermore, he is the managing director of Beauty Restoration Spa , a full-service laser medi spa.

His professional attributes extend to being the webmaster, server administrator, and internet marketing manager at Sportaid/Mediad division of SRG., Inc. They have developed an eCommerce system with complex options in X-Cart and have fully integrated it into Georgia via GTM. They are currently improving efficiency by developing EDI processes. Sportaid is a great place to work! Moreover, Douglas is the founder of Newton County Learning , where they teach business students practical internet marketing skills to help them achieve success through innovation and technology.

Douglas believes that the golden rule of consistency can bring an effective change in your business and help you rise to an unprecedented level. Consistency enables you to focus on your goal, which is gravely necessary in order to form a constructive company. One should not be distracted or disheartened due to unexpected outcomes. They should focus on working hard and waiting for success to knock on their door.

Starting a Business From Scratch

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Mon, 01 May 2023 05:20:44 GMT

Business leader, Doug Hauptman, shares how anyone can start a business.

One of the best things about starting a business is that you do not need to be a certain age in order to make your entrepreneurship dreams come true.

You might have heard about several business people who started their company without a dime to their name and somehow found the success that many other business owners hope to achieve. So what is so special about them? Let us talk about a prime example of Douglas Lloyd Hauptman Jr. to better understand the world of successful entrepreneurs.

As an English personal life coach, activist, business and software developer, actor, realtor, and entrepreneur, Hauptman Jr. has spent many years in the professional sector making a name for himself. His first business endeavor started at the young age of seven when he established his lemonade stand in California. From then onwards, he decided to further improve his skills and find his way into the professional sector. His second business approach was SEONow.us , a company that delivers search engine positioning services to small businesses. His third start-up, AllAroundPools.us is centered on building and repairing spas and swimming pools found in the local area.

Moreover, Hauptman Jr. is a business and marketing consultant devoted to helping out small and middle-sized companies to implement strategies that would increase their sales and growth. Additionally, he also owns the Beauty Bar Med Spa since 2017 and the Atlanta Google Agency since 2000, a website and digital advertising firm. His recent business approach includes Purely CBD of Lithonia and The American Marketing Company , which is a firm that has been providing marketing solutions since its establishment in 2020. Due to his elite services, he has been certified by Google, which helps in giving more value to his business and his set of skills.

His experiences have led to many people asking him how he made it this far – and his answers have helped many people start their own business from scratch.

A Solid Business Idea

The first step to ensure a successful business venture is to make sure that you have an excellent business idea. This way, you will have a clearer idea of how you want to make your product or service.

According to Business Owner's Playbook , this step is crucial as it helped about 79.4% of companies to survive during their first year of operation.

Write the Business Plan

A business plan is a detailed blueprint of your current business positions and your plans to improve it in the future.

It also serves as an excellent resource for you to navigate your business goals more efficiently. A business plan includes various important features and documents such as business purpose, product or service details, financial information, market analysis, and so much more.

This is extremely beneficial when you want outside sources to invest in your business. Depending on your business plan, there might be many investors who will be interested in helping you prepare your business by lending you the financial assistance you need to enhance the business.

The Perks of Pursuing an Early Entrepreneurship Career

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Mon, 01 May 2023 02:53:19 GMT

Learn how to kick start your company at any stage of the game!

So far, you might have heard multiple people telling you how difficult it is to start up your own business and that you will need to have a lot of experience to ensure success. Although it is true that you need to put in a consistent effort to keep your company afloat, you do not need to wait to gain a certain amount of business experience to kick start your company.

Truthfully, starting a business at a young age can reap several benefits that you might not have expected. If you are reading this, you must be a young aspiring business person who wants to start their career early – but you are not sure whether starting early is a good or bad idea.

Fortunately, there are many prestigious entrepreneurs out there who have accomplished many hardships in their careers and managed to make a name for themselves. For example, let us consider Douglas Lloyd Hauptman Jr. – a highly acclaimed entrepreneur, personal life coach, activist, actor, and the ideal person with a work example that aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from.

You will be shocked to know that Hauptman Jr.'s business journey began at the young age of three; a lemonade stand in California made a huge impact on his future career plans and his unique approach to business endeavors that make him stand out amongst the rest of his competitors.

His first business start-up was AtlantaWebsites.com , a website development services company for businesses. This quickly led to his many other establishments, including the Beauty Bar med Spa, the Atlanta Google Agency, the American Marketing Company , and many more.

Hauptman Jr. stands as one of the best business and marketing consultants you will encounter. He helps middle and small-sized companies implement strategies to increase sales and growth. Here are some of the reasons he has shared with the public on why it can be beneficial to start an entrepreneurship career early.

Potential Long-Term Returns

Imagine that you have built up a successful business – it is stable, prosperous and generates about six figures with of salary. What's more is that you like your job and can see yourself working on it continuously. Now, would you like the benefits that come with this for as long as possible?

If you do, starting a career earlier should be what you work towards. To many people in business, this might seem like a far-fetched idea. However, after two or three tries of building up an enterprise, you are sure to find a long-term and prosperous one that you can enjoy working for.

Trade-offs Become Low

There will always be a trade-off for every decision you make. In this case, starting a business has much lower trade-offs.
Students that graduate from universities tend to end up in a lower workplace position. So, if you miss out on this job and opt for starting a company instead, it is more likely that similar opportunities are going to be available in the future. However, if you do things in reverse - starting a company when you have acquired a decent job with good pay and health benefits – you might end up losing a lot more.

Doug Hauptman Shines the Light on Entrepreneurship

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 05:14:50 GMT

There are many strategies to surviving and thriving in the professional sector.

Owning a Business

Starting your own business can be an exciting adventure with many perks that come along the way. You get to be the boss of your company, choosing your pick from people you want to work with, setting work schedule timings according to what you see fit, bringing your business ideas to life, and so much more. And because of that, many people have started to consider walking down this business path – but you need to remember that having something this good comes at a price.

Those who did not understand this concept eventually ended up closing down their business permanently in the first year of operation. The reality behind starting your business is that you will need to really push through to maintain consistent efforts so that your company does not fall behind in the competitive business race of the professional sector.

Douglas Lloyd Hauptman Jr., an entrepreneur, personal life coach, and business developer, among many other things, is one of the few business leaders who has spent many years working in the professional sector to know exactly how it functions for new and old business owners alike.

He began his entrepreneurship journey at the age of seven when he set up a lemonade stand in California. Once he became passionate about business, he aimed for bigger heights – AtlantaWebsites.com , a website development service company for other businesses, became his first professional company. Afterward, he started working on his other company, SEONow.us , which delivered search engine positioning services to diverse small-scale businesses. Not long after, he launched his third start-up, AllAroundPools.us , a company focused on building and repairing spas and swimming pools in the local area.

Moreover, as a business and marketing consultant, he has spent many years aiding small and middle-sized companies in implementing strategic approaches to enhance sales and growth in their business. Additionally, he has also been open about sharing his advice to young aspiring entrepreneurs who are thinking about starting their business or for business owners who need help in further prospering their business.

Organization is the Key

If your business processes are properly organized, you are already one step ahead of other struggling companies. Managing your tasks helps you figure out which ones take priority and need to be dealt with as soon as possible. Similarly, it also helps you become more aware of your company's current condition – and the more you know about your company, the more you will be able to come up with ideas that will help improve your business productivity.

Avoiding Micromanagement with Employees

Your job as the head of the company is to discuss your plan for making the product or service and then letting your employees work on making your plans work. But if you are being a constant control freak over their every little move, you will be harming their creativity, causing them to create negative results out of their work.

Simply inspect their progress and allow them the room they need to implement their creative input into the business. This way, you will be fostering a healthy and productive work environment where your employees can truly thrive on creating products and services that will ultimately result in your business success.

Benefits of a Career in Entrepreneurship

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 19:22:36 GMT

Find out where entrepreneurship fits into the world and the role you can play.

Entrepreneurs encounter existing firms to become more competitive as they often enter the market with reduced prices and more product diversity. It can cause existing players to re-assess their operations, increase their worth, reduce costs, and become more effective.

Situated in the state of Georgia, tremendous business personel Douglas Hauptman, is an excellent example of a thrilling personality to rise into everything from nothing. The excited entrepreneur is a money director, programming designer, enthusiastic industrialist, artist, real estate agent, political activist, and so much more. Douglas seeks a diverse set of endeavors and has accomplished eminent thriving in every one of them.

This electrifying business personality has many new businesses which are moving along as expected. He is the CEO of AMARCO , an abbreviation for American Marketing Company . Douglas L. Hauptman Jr. established this company and creates promoting activities that consolidate the best variety of print and computerized arrangements. He is additionally the CEO of another American promoting organization, AtlantaWebsites.com . Both of these organizations give phenomenal advertising methods and dispositions that can up your business game.

Douglas also oversees a Realty Venture Group LLC dba Mimosa Salon Suites. These suites are rented to talented experts, including beauticians, estheticians, all-normal nail specialists, and back rub advisors. Likewise, he is the overseer of Beauty Bar Med Spain Covington, GA , which is one of his new businesses that's zeroing in on excellence. Furthermore, he is the overseeing head of Beauty Restoration Spa , a full-administration laser surgeon spa.

Hauptman has compiled this document for our better understanding and to embrace the prospect of entrepreneurship. Let’s learn them as:

1. Entrepreneurs generate job opportunities.

This remains one of the top motivations because individuals tend to become entrepreneurs following not being able to find an appropriate career. Entrepreneurs create new industries and, in return, create service opportunities for people. Businesspersons can generate an income for themselves, but they also hire other individuals in their business processes. As a result, those who did not have a job before will have a chance to have a career.

2. Entrepreneurs increase rivalry & boost efficiency.

Increased competition within a budget is beneficial because organizations and people will source methods to improve their processes. The new business establishment of industrialists, with high-growth determinations and revolution, will push recognized businesses to increase their efficiency and improve routines.

3. Entrepreneurs create new businesses & new markets.

As the inclinations in the world remain to change, people’s demands will vary, giving entrepreneurs a prospect to start new industries.

A saturated marketplace can result in entrepreneurs seeking new markets for their products and services. This can positively impact the budget. Entrepreneurs may even produce new businesses that become the appliances of future development.

4. Entrepreneurs add national income.

The new products or services created by industrialists result in new prosperity from the new markets. Moreover, higher pays due to entrepreneurship can help boost national income. It is in higher government spending and tax revenue, resulting in investments in stressed sectors and capital..

5. Entrepreneurs introduce innovative technology.

Individuals often recourse to entrepreneurship to provide niche resolutions or use their creativity, technical knowledge, or finances to produce their income. Innovative concepts and resourcefulness are initial driving factors for entrepreneurs, which result in significant involvement in the budget.

From a Lemonade Stand to My Feet in the Sand

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 16:13:54 GMT

Determination will take you anywhere, if you let it.

How I Freed My Spirit and Lifted My Feet from the Ground

The darker times in our lives are usually memories we don’t like to visit, but instead of letting them remain a negative thought in our heart, we can use these memories as a witness. By witness I mean allow them to be a reminder to us that we have absolute control over our lives. Every piece of the puzzle to our lives has a spot and there would not be a full image without each piece. For some pieces, it’s hard to place them where they fit. But I assure you, they fit somewhere and complete the story you tell. No matter how difficult of times you endured, if you are still here today to tell of them, then you most certainly learned a lesson. These lessons are what we reflect on when we feel down or not worthy. Without these reflections, how would we recognize our growth? We wouldn’t. I want to share my story with you, as a testimony to a motto I often preach to my employees, children, and others I mentor:

You can do anything if you work hard enough.

My little brother and I grew up near the corner of 35th and McArthur in Oakland, California. We both were trouble makers, like most boys our age, but our bubbly and outgoing personalities turned trouble into business. When I was 7 years old, our father gave us the idea to start a lemonade stand on the corner. We jumped on the idea, of course, and went straight to building the stand and coming up with flavors. Many kids did this during those days, but we were blessed with an extra detail to our story. Still to this day, I can remember the bus driver that brought success to our passion as two little boys. He was an older black man that drove the Metro bus around our neighborhood. He would consistently take his 15 minute lunch break right on our corner and buy a cup of lemonade from us. The blessing was that everyone on the bus would unload and also buy a cup from us. The bus driver was always kind and humble, and it was his act in parking the bus on this particular corner that gave us inspiration. This inspiration left a lifetime of compassion with me.

At the start of this endeavor, our goal was to simply satisfy my father. However, as the money came in so did my determination to make more. My mom and dad were never rich but they always gave us money for lunch and anything school related. Anything else we wanted had to come from our weekly allowance and my allowance barely touched my fascination with pin ball machines! Across the street from our lemonade stand was a hamburger place with my favorite machine, Kings and Queens. You can imagine my eyes lighting up when I had a jar full of quarters to spend! If I could go back and tell that little boy a word of advice, it would be to save. I never saved a penny, but perhaps that is what gave me to momentum to earn even more.

My parents were constantly separating and dating in between. They eventually divorced. We spent a lot of time raising ourselves and staying busy with our own adventures. We moved from Oakland to San Diego, California. We made our new home in the apartments and my dad made deliveries for UPS to pay the bills. He was later fired for drinking on the job and found a new position delivering prescription drugs. My dad would steal some of the pills and leave them organized on the counter before passing out for the night.

My best friend happened to live in the very same apartments, his name was Dwayne. Dwayne and I had already been dabbling in drugs and decided to start skimping some from my dad’s stash. We would wake up early while my dad was still asleep and carefully take some of the really good stuff without making a sound. We added these pills to our inventory and proceeded to invest in marijuana and other drugs. As young boys, we were rewarded with popularity at school and, of course, the girls were crazy for us! This is the time in my life that I learned to be street smart and also how to be direct in collecting money. These skills carried on into my future but I also went down a difficult road of drug dependence before utilizing them to my advantage.
I moved to San Diego and dived deep into growing marijuana. I grew a ginormous plant and had endless money flowing in. Eventually, I found myself in a bad crowd doing meth, heroin, and other harder drugs. I was still just a teenager at this time.

When I tuned 16, my great uncle had died unexpectedly in a car accident. I dropped everything and went with my family to Hena, California for the funeral. I remember looking down at Dick and getting the surreal feeling that he was speaking right to me. Afterwards, the family gathered at my grandma Bernise’s house for the eulogy. My aunt Teddy gave a speech that gave me an epiphany to change the direction of my life. She said, “God does certain things at certain times to get our attention. If you aren’t doing right by our family, and you’re sitting out there, then get it together”. It was at this time, that I also started feeling withdrawals from the drugs. I went back to San Diego with a mindset that changed my future for the better.

I was sick for about 6 months with the most agonizing withdrawals, but it did pass, just as all things in life do. I got my health back but I also was kicked out of my house and ended up quitting school. Instead of selling drugs, this time I worked 2 jobs, paid for an apartment, and began attending college with my GED. I was forced to get it together following Grandpa Dick’s death and that might have in return, saved my life.

At 18 years old, I had endured most things that people experience as young adults, not as a child. I decided I was done with dish washing and fast food jobs. I wanted more. I landed a job as a salesman and thrived at it because I loved to talk! I had a great persona and understating of communication. I learned this skill long before the sale position, I learned it as a survival skill. I realized that I would always have the skill of talking to others and being persuasive, but it’s where I applied these skills that would determine my future success, and drugs were no longer the reward. My self-worth was the new reward. The next 3 years were challenging and testing of my determination, but like everything in life, something bigger was to come.

At 21 I was selling semiconductors and computer electronics, making 20k in just one month. I quit college and went head first into sales and commissions. The road ahead proved to be full of opportunity and I didn’t let even one pass me by. Today, I am a successful entrepreneur and in return helping others, like my young self, succeed in their goals and aspirations.

I wanted to share this story because it’s proof that anyone can come up no matter how low they are. My bottom was drug dealing in Oakland California, sleeping in a van, and down on my luck as a 16 year old boy, yet here I am high as ever on determination and motivation. The secret to my success was simply change and action. The only thing ever holding you back from reaching your goals is your own decision to take action and make these changes where necessary. No one can do that for you but your own self.

I went through a lot of hardship that no young child should ever endure but the mentality of achieving anything I dream of was gifted to me at my youngest of phases. When I was 6 or 7, I vividly remember my dad inviting me for a walk along the railroad tracks. I was skipping stones and being the usual curious boy. My father stopped and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told him I wanted to be the President. He asked what kind of president I had in mind and I told him, “the President of the United States daddy”. He replied, “Well son, you can do anything if you work hard enough”.

Those words never left my side to this day and throughout my journey as a young man with big dreams. My life is a testimony to his words and I try to pass that on to my employees, children, and anyone I come into contact with. You can read my other blog posting, “Life and Death Legacy”, to see my perspective on legacy and why it is important to leave one behind for others after you.

My message to you is that everyone should leave a life that is noteworthy. You don’t have to have children to pass on your influence, you can influence many people in life through community service, mentoring, or simply helping someone in need of support. If you can make a difference in at least one person’s life before you die, well then you have made this world a better place.

Today, I am a life coach aside from my other business ventures because I want to give back to my community and help others overcome hurdles that show up along the way. I am grateful to put my feet in the sand with my family in complete peace, but I will never forget the boy at the apartments, the boy in the van, and the boy who made his first big sale. I want to help others identify the strengths in their biggest doubts, and use that validation to get off their feet and soar to anywhere they wish.

Stepping Outside of Your Comfort Zone is Vital to the Growth of Your Business

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 21:49:57 GMT

Routines can make us feel safe but they limit the rate of our success!

What Is a Comfort Zone?

A comfort zone develops from a routine or familiarity in a person’s life. Sometimes a comfort zone is beneficial, such as when you are ill. However, for entrepreneurs, staying in a comfort zone is extremely hindering to success. It will prevent us from making new partnerships and expanding our business because we are stuck in a safe bubble that we are familiar with. There is a difference between a mission and a leisure. Leisure is what we enjoy and what brings us happiness, whereas a mission is our purpose in life and the impact we want to make in our lifetime.

Winners Never Quit

Fear of failure is often the root of our stagnation in making changes or trying something new. This perspective prevents us from expanding and causes us to turn down opportunities. Being scared is a part of human nature but we can train ourselves to be both bold and courageous. We can only learn if we make mistakes first! If you do step outside your comfort zone and it doesn’t work out, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t in your favor. Even failures are beneficial to us because they make us come back twice as strong. Reflection is key to this growth because we can look back and identify pitfalls, decide whether the result was in our control or not, and make changes before retrying again. This assessment has to be done in a responsible and positive manner so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over. We also want step outside of our comfort zone so that we don’t regret not giving something our all or feel disappointed in our lack of effort.

Take a Leap of Faith!

A strong sense of faith and purpose can help encourage us to try new things, even if we are not sure about them. Having faith has many meanings depending on what our beliefs are, but is always helping us gain confidence and have a positive perspective. In order to have faith, we must also establish a mission or purpose for all that we do in life. Having a mission keeps us aimed in the right direction and motivates us to expand or reach farther. If we can all work on staying positive and working for a greater good, then this energy will drive humanity into the evolution of our DNA and good karma will inevitably result. If we are fearful or doubtful of stepping outside of our comfort zone, we can turn to religion, spirituality, or simply faith, for the helping hand we need.

Challenging Yourself at Work

Work is a vital area that we should always be trying to improve in. When work becomes repetitive we tend to lose interest in passion and this shift can take us down a dark road. Challenging ourselves and stepping outside of our comfort zone can result in many positive changes such as a promotion, expansion, or learning a new skill. Even if we fail at this challenge, we are still learning lessons that only help us grow. If we want to efficiently tackle a new change or aspiration, we should do so strategically so that we have the best experience possible. Balancing risks and benefits is the first step to taking a new path.

One example of how I had to step outside my comfort zone is when I was contemplating expanding my business following the pandemic. Covid-19 had struck at the exact time I was signing a new lease and opening an additional location for my business. At first, I was scared and considered canceling the lease all together. However when I put my fears aside and analyzed my situation, I realized that my business is efficient and made it through plenty of intimidating challenges in the past because of its appeal to all markets. Instead of running from this obstacle, I came up with a plan for success. I reviewed numbers and incorporated various COVID prevention protocols that allowed us to continue operating while maintaining all the safety measures our clients were concerned about. One year later, and our third location is very profitable and even has a waiting list! Had I not taken a leap of faith, we would not be to this point today.

Meet New People

Sometimes we can get anxiety over meeting new people and that’s natural. This anxiety stems from our fear of not being accepted and it can prevent us from many opportunities in the future. We can find courage to socialize outside our normal routine by connecting with people who align with our beliefs or share the same mission in life. These social situations can lead to new partnerships, ideas, and even improvements. By making new relationships and focusing on helping other people, or receiving help, we create magnetism for success. With success, comes confidence.

What If I Give Up?

Giving up can seem like our last option, or first, but with the right motivators and inspiration we can change our perspective entirely. Instead of telling ourselves we are a failure, we can decide that a change of course is needed or seek support. We can also refocus on our mission and let our heart take the lead. Giving up is a mindset, not a characteristic. Making a smooth transition into a new venture is where I can step in as a life coach and give you the support you need. I can help assess your situation and develop a plan with you to get you moving in the right direction. Allowing someone experienced in business expansion and entrepreneurship to guide you can help you avoid common mistakes and align your plan for the highest degree of success. I can help you stay on track, reach for higher goals, and gain the confidence you need to go even further with your business or career.

Make Something Out of Nothing, With Goals

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:18:05 GMT

Time will never stop, nor should you.

What Are Goals?

Goals are the method by which we create a new reality, we make something out of nothing. When you have a vision, you are bringing a new idea to the world and that is a beautiful contribution. Goal setting is one of the many artistic facets of entrepreneurship. Goals need to be appreciated because they are the columns to the building of success in business. Without goals and acting on those goals, everything is really just talk and speculation.

Goals are not in everyone’s business plan, but they should be if we want to achieve our dreams. Some people lack courage because they fear failure. Likewise, some people lack the discipline to set goals because they are unmotivated and ultimately, lazy. Aside from motivation and courage, many people simply have no desire to set or reach goals because they picked a vision that they aren’t passionate about.

The Learning Process

There is no specific strategy to accomplishing goals because it’s an innovative process and we are meant to make mistakes. Part of setting goals is breaking the goals and learning from the mistakes that lead to up to the failure. We have to figure out changes, emphasis, focus, adjustments, and reassess our aims and objectives. If we only make small goals then it’s easy to go through life saying we accomplished them all. You can accomplish many goals without being successful. It’s more impactful to make challenging goals that do present possible failure. Failure is not always a negative factor in learning because it’s necessary if we want to grow and expand. To keep momentum in goal setting, all we need is a can-do attitude and more importantly, a never-quit perspective. Both of these requirements run off of courage. Goals are similar to the foot soldiers of war. You can fail and lose money, customers, and so forth but all of these hardships can lead to the gaining of courage which will bring success. Be confident in your capabilities, create a system that works, and never quit.

Time Never Stops, Nor Should You

Goals can also be very illusive because the market in business is constantly changing. Goals can never stay the same and will differ between industries and audiences. Also, if you take too long to complete your goals, then you can outlive the usefulness of that goal. In other words, the goal will pass you by. It’s important to beat the market and extremely beneficial to be the first in anything. I always say, “always be the firstest with the mostest”. You have to be quick and adequate or you will never keep up with the demand and survive a spot in the market because time will never stop for you. Humans often underestimate themselves in capability but I can assure that if you put all your effort in and give it your all, a reward will always come.

Success Never Comes Easy

Self- doubt is a healthy part of the learning process because it requires self-reflection. If we knew that we could accomplish every goal we set, then we would never establish uniqueness within our business or continue to rise up. Even in relationships we can outgrow each other. Organizations are always evolving and changing, just like people. When we choose to stay within our comfort zone, we are assuming that everything is ok, we don’t try very hard, and we struggle to get inspired. If you are having difficulty getting inspired, see my blog on “ Faith in God Will Keep You Inspired” .

Evaluating and reflecting will help us figure out what our business is lacking instead of running off or ignoring what’s weighing it down. We must assess the situation, figure out what needs to be done, obtain the resources necessary, make a timeline, and follow through with our plan. If you set your mind to a goal and plan it out with these factors in mind, then there will be nothing you cannot accomplish. Setting too many borders around our capabilities may prevent failures but consequently will prevent growth and in the end, success. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you must remain open minded and willing to change with the market tides when necessary.

The Most Important Part of Your Dream is You

Before we start setting goals, we usually have a dream. I think of a dream as a vision we have where we tell ourselves, “that would be nice”. Dreams could be ideas, desires, services, products, or just about anything else that is satisfying to imagine. Generally, the dream comes about by recognizing that there is a need for something in the market or neighborhood that no one else has provided. After you discover the need, you develop an ethos, a mission statement, and a plan for how you will accomplish the goals. After you plan everything out, the momentum comes naturally. It’s also important to sit down and contemplate what is sustainable and if it will make revenue. Unless you’re a millionaire, which most of us aren’t, we need to make and do things that are profitable.

Goals Require Objectives

Goals and aims will always require objectives. The goals are a part of the enterprise but they are not the dream. The dream formulates a vision and then we make objectives to complete the goal. For example:

Aim: I want to be a good guy.

Goal: I want to feed hungry kids at school.

Aim: I want to feed all the kids in a certain county.

Goal: I need to create a list of schools in the area and do research on the best menu for their diet.

Milestones: I need to think about how many kids I kept from being hungry and how many schools we provided for .

One book I suggest reading in relation to goal setting and achieving dreams is from the Emyth Series, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within . This book has given me life changing momentum behind my goals and I would suggest it to any new or established entrepreneur. I recommend this book to all my clients because it lays out an efficient way to run business in a way that is understandable to anyone and most of all because I know it works!

Quitting Is Losing

The last thing I have to say about goal setting is that a successful entrepreneur never quits. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who quit because if you believe in yourself and believe in your work, then you will accept your failures and keep experimenting until you get it right. I like to tell the story of Warren Buffet when it comes to success and failure. Around 1982, before he was billionaire, he was successful but still experiencing failures. In the first ten years of his career, he opened and closed many businesses and deals. He never gave up and eventually learned to create market value and a significant profit. He lost money until he refined and perfected his process. Today, he has a well-defined process and if you invested 10k dollars in him in 1965, you would be worth 165 million dollars today. He has developed a very specific investing process and is one of the hardest working entrepreneurs when it comes to selecting companies, selling them, and fixing them up. Buffet was never born rich, he went through trial and error and figured it all out with his own confidence and courage.

How I Can Help You

As a life coach, I can provide you with psychological guidance and encouragement as well as tools and resources to perfect the act of goal setting. Once we identify your goals, we can set objectives and timelines and eventually have you on your way to success within the business world. Make the support of a life coach an objective to reaching your dreams of a successful business.

Faith in God Will Keep You Fueled With Inspiration

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 06:03:05 GMT

Fulfillment can be found in any situation so long as you have a purpose.

Inspiration vs Motivation

Inspiration and motivation are two completely different concepts and it’s important that we understand why. Inspiration comes from a place of spirituality; it’s a heartfelt manner. Motivation can have spiritual factors, but primarily stems from seeking a reward such as money. For example, I could be inspired to help feed starving children but lose motivation from the charity misusing funds. Inspiration will never go stagnant if you have a strong belief system and faith in a higher being. In my case, I am inspired to help others and express gratitude into the world but I am motivated by knowing that I am doing God’s work. No matter how much money I earn or how good or bad my business works out, I always remain both motivated and inspired because in my heart I know I am working unto the Lord within a command. I passionately believe that we are all here to fundamentally work. I could never pick a purpose that is not godly received and everything I do is to help someone or make the world a better place. This belief system keeps me rolling without ever having a stagnant mindset.

Inspiration comes from our spirituality and everyone has spiritual gifts that can positively contribute to a good cause. It’s vital to figure out what your purpose and mission are so that you can remain aligned with both inspiration and motivation. (See “Working For Your Life Purpose")

Inspiration at Work

We often perceive work as something purely motivated by reward, in most cases money. However, work is no longer something that requires a reward when we can work with inspiration in our heart and spirit. What inspires you needs to come from a deep, heartfelt, and spiritual place. It must be what you were born here to do. No matter what kind of reward you do or don’t get, as long as you are working for a purpose and a mission higher than anything materialistic, then you will remain in a positive state of mind and heart.

Instead of perceiving work as something you have to do, think of it as something you want to do. When I was a young adult, I often found myself going in and out of inspiration. I focused on solely motivation and this caused me a great deal of struggle. When I had lots of money, I felt very inspired, but when I had no money I became completely lost. It wasn’t until I found the Lord at age 27 that I became inspired to do the work of God and never found myself at loss for inspiration again.

Inspiration comes from the heart and is fundamental on our belief system. After I became a born again Christian, my purpose became helping others and expressing gratitude. It no longer mattered what the material reward was because in my heart I was fulfilling my devotion to the Lord with my intent. One example that demonstrates inspiration topping all circumstances is a story I tell about a man working in a button factory:

The man sews buttons onto jackets all day long. An outsider might think this is a terribly boring job with no point. But the man is fulfilled because he perceives this job as God’s work and makes it so by saying a prayer unto each button he sews. He prays for the person who wears the jacket to be protected and guided by the Lord. This man places millions of buttons and more significant, millions of prayers. Imagine the amount of power in a prayer and all of the lives that were helped because of this man’s purpose. This is a beautiful example of working unto the Lord.

The Sermon That Inspired Me

I can think of many situations where my own faith in the Lord kept me inspired and moving forward towards my purpose. One that I distinctly remember was in the year 2006 when I was attending a church sermon. The pastor expressed how important it is that we give back.

I had just started Realty Venture Group, LLC and took on 40k per month in debt. The first year was going great but then we hit a recession in the country and all of my tenants quickly departed. I teetered on bankruptcy and knew by the flick of a pen I could wash it all down the drain and start over. At one point, I felt I could no longer do it and wanted to give up.

The church sermon kept me going because I knew in my heart that this was what God wanted. He wanted me to help the African American families with their dreams and work together with other races. In the end, I lost 800k. However, with my purpose to give whispering in my ear, I turned the situation around and worked another 5 years working a brutal 80 hours per week. 10 years later and my business was a great success!

This experience gave me faith and inspiration to persevere in the business world. I felt that this was my mission to God and if I hadn’t discovered this purpose, then I wouldn’t have made it. After coming up out of that period of hardship within my business, I continued to find success in other business ventures as well. My inspiration lead to evolution in the business world.

Evolution of Inspiration

Inspiration plays a prominent role in our existence. If we lack inspiration and faith, then we will complain and continue to make excuses. This unfortunate perspective only takes us down a dark road of self-loathing. True inspiration is a part of the evolution process and it drives us to keep reaching higher and higher. Inspiration is the action and result of faith. If we do not grow and evolve, we can devolve into degenerate thinking which leads to things such as hatred and violence.

Some people have fear when it comes to faith. Fear is natural and both emotional and instinctual. The most important thing a person can do is “fear not” for the only thing we should fear is fear itself. In the Bible, fear is mentioned 365 times. The challenge we must face in the midst of fear is our ability to find courage. I pray to God to give me courage because I know he will. There is no developmental schooling that can transform you from a coward to a hero. Almost every hero found a core strength in their faith in God.

Spirituality with Others

One experience that can help give you courage and strengthen your faith is group spirituality. Group spirituality is the notion of brotherhood and gathering together. Examples of this are attending church, group prayers, concerts, and so forth. There is a spiritual aspect to gathering with others and the power is undeniable. Jesus had said:

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”.

The bible goes on to teach about a gathering of men who all spoke different languages but could understand each other perfectly. There is also an unbelievable amount of study done on this topic. The power of all spirits coming together has a communal effect and you can feel it both emotionally and physically. For me personally, the hairs on my neck and arms stand up and I can feel the energy sweeping through my entire body. One of my favorite songs that I feel has a lot of communal power behind it is Amazing Grace by Rod Stewart.

Get Inspired From a Life Coach

As a life coach, I can tell you many stories to get you inspired and help you strengthen your faith by opening your heart and mind to becoming a believer in Christ. I am not excluding people who do not believe in Jesus but actually doing quite the opposite. Prior to turning 27 years old, I believed in nothing but science and myself. I could bring any Christian to tears while trying to talk them out of being a believer. What’s beautiful is that it was God Himself who brought me to my knees and guided me to a transitioning decision to continue in life. I believe there is nothing more powerful I can do for others than welcome them to God’s work.

Like the bible states, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”, so let’s start your journey with the Lord, yourself, and I!

Physical Health Is More Than Just a Number

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 22:43:51 GMT

Keeping up with your physical health takes more than just monitoring your weight.

What is Physical Health?

When people think about the word physical, they often immediately assume appearance. That is the unfortunate result of the expectations set on us by society. There is a difference between physical health and physical exercise. Exercise is only one aspect of our overall health. Physical health takes many factors to determine and appearance is the least priority because, besides injury or illness, it’s almost purely perspective. When thinking about your overall health, ask yourself the following questions:

How do you feel?

Think about how much energy you have throughout the day and how often you get any aches or pains. Also consider your mental health such as your mood and, more importantly, your focus and memory. According to healthline.com, anemia can cause fatigue and anxiety. When you do your daily routine do you get pain in your joints or only during exercise? Identify and write down your trigger points to discuss with your physician.

How do you look?

Olay stated that “the condition of our skin reflects what we eat”. Not only should we pay attention to our skin but also our hair, nails, and eyes. Feel if your hair is its usual thickness or if you’re losing much of it to the drain. Look at your eyes and if your skin is dark around them or if they are red or yellow. Yellow eyes can be a sign of jaundice, a condition caused from too much bilirubin. Beauty is much different than a healthy appearance because it is based solely off of perspective.

How do you act?

According to PubMD.com, deficiencies in magnesium can cause irritability, anxiety, and agitation. Pay attention to what your friends and family say about your mood and if your attitude seems to feel out of your control. Contact your doctor right away if you have serious signs of confusion or delusions.

How are your numbers?

The above factors are important to our overall health but our numbers can also tell us about the signs we might not feel or see at all. Heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, weight, and oxygen numbers are all valuable information about the functioning of our bodies. Also, eye sight, nerve, and hearing tests provide insight about our senses. The most talked about number is our weight. Talk to your physician about what weight, and other numbers, are healthy for you as these vary with each individual.

How Does Age Effect Our Health?

A major factor in our physical health, which was not listed above, is our age. Age is one thing in life that we cannot control or change. Make sure you set boundaries that align with what is appropriate for your age. Injuries from over exertion can be minor for a child but life threatening to an elderly adult. There are also different priorities in health depending on what age you are because we are prone to different ailments and diseases at different stages of our lives. Below, I explain priorities and risks for three age groups including children and middle to late aged adults.

Children: Our children need to start good habits that they can carry with them into adulthood. A healthy diet is important for energy and their ability to focus in school. Exercise is equally important because it will help shape their metabolism and reduces hyperactivity. Both their mental and physical health contributes to their development into mature young adults someday.

Young Adults: At this age, we tend to start neglecting physical activity and replacing it with work. It’s important to continue getting adequate exercise and eating just as healthy as your parents once told you to! Additionally, young adults are prone to developing addictions and other life altering habits that effect physical health. If we neglect these factors as young adults, they will only roll into our older years and have much worse consequences. To get an idea of what priorities young adults have for physical health I asked 30 year old and skilled laborer River Richard what was important to him at this age:

“When I hit about 27 years old, I notice a difference in my joints. I started to feel stiff in the morning and my knees hurt after work. I realized that I needed to start stretching every day and eating foods that would benefit my joints. I also made a choice to stop drinking after I started to consider my heart health and how I look. I want to feel as young as I do today, in 30 years. “

Older Adults: As we get older and closer to our retirement age, health becomes more important than ever. Instead of running to raise our heart rate, we have to closely monitor it and sometimes even resort to walking instead. We also need to keep our diet healthy not only for weight, but for nourishing the parts of our body that need it more than others. As an older adult, if you take care of your health, you can continue doing all the activities and adventures you did while young. Life coach and successful businessman Doug Hauptman let me in on how he stay fit and full of energy:

“We need to get back to the basics with our food. Eggs, meats, fruits, seeds, and vegetables need to be our focus and less of the processed and diet foods. I also regularly meditate and get a lot of physical activity through yoga, the gym, and running. Before I do any of these things, I always make it a priority to stretch, which has kept my joints in great shape. I take advantage of the technology we have access to and use apps to track my stress, heart activity, calories, steps, and so forth. Apps make it easy to fit my health into my schedule and for me to reflect on my habits. I love the rush I get when I keep up with the younger guys!”

The Couch, TV, and a Bag of Chips

Sitting on the couch, with a bowl on popcorn on our lap, while watching our favorite movie, is a scenario we see all the time. While it’s perfectly fine to have a Sunday movie night or kick back on the couch, we do not want to make it a habit. TV not only takes our attention, but it also is often watched while we sit and, even worse, while we eat.

Pay attention to how much you watch TV during your normal day. Also consider why you are watching TV. Are you fatigued or just bored? One way to be active and still watch our favorite shows is to use a treadmill or stability ball instead of the couch. The stability ball works for an office setting too! The habit of watching TV also takes away from our time outside. Outdoor activities, which I will get into next, are important not only for staying in shape, but also for getting enough sunlight. Even if you decide to fold laundry or dust your shelves, anything is better than sitting on the couch while watching TV. Replace the chips with some carrots and blue cheese, and you are no longer a couch potato at all!

One of my mottos is that I better not be going to the gym if my house is not cleaned. While gym equipment is a great way to stay in shape, cleaning your own house can also get you physically active and burning calories. Not only do you stay in shape, but you are also keeping your environment clean. A clean environment reduces stress and leaves more room open for activities and new projects! The same theory can be used for yard work.

Even if you can keep yourself off of the couch, it’s always important to identify why you became attached to this habit in the first place. Reflecting on our bad habits helps motivate us towards change and makes us grateful for our progress.

The Benefits and Beauty of the Sun

Make the sun a priority in your life. The sun produces vitamin D which is crucial to our health because it effects multiple functions in our bodies. According to heathline.com, Vitamin D fights disease, reduces depression, and boosts weight loss. Additionally, if you are outside trying to get vitamin D you are more likely to be doing something active. Getting sunlight is a great excuse to go on a hike, do some gardening, or simply walk around the block.

Using vitamin D as an excuse to be outside also brings us closer to nature and appreciating our surroundings. All of these factors benefit our overall health, which is why we should invite the sun into our daily lives. While vitamin D and outdoor activities are great benefits to our health, always be cautious of your exposure to sunlight and follow safety measures.

Apps to Keep You on Track

Fitbit App: This app connects with the Fitbit fitness bands and tracks steps, heart rate, weight and more. The bands can be connected to iOS and Android apps as well as in your browser. This app and band is one of the more popular fitness tools that people use to track their physical productivity and health.

V Shred App: This is a company with a great reputation for getting people healthy on the inside and out. The app provides you with fitness plans, nutritional guidance, and expert supplementation advice. Their mission relies on not requiring extensive will power or discipline to get health but focuses on variety of tactics to ensure “minimum effective” dose workouts.

Garmin Connect: This app connects to a Garmin device and lets you track your steps, create your own work out, and monitor your numbers. What is especially fun about this app is that you can invite family and friends to compete or set goals with.

Calm App: The Calm app is free and beneficial for relieving stress and anxiety. It provides you with calming music and scenarios to help calm your nerves or entice meditation. While many of us focus on getting our heart rate up, it’s equally important to be able to slow it down too.

MyFitnessPal App: This app is among the most popular calorie counters on the market. The app can track your diet choices, daily exercise, and even allows you to scan barcodes at the grocery store!

Having a Life Coach Will Help You Focus On and Maintain Your Physical Health

It’s easy to understand why our physical health is important and how to keep it optimal but practicing habits that support these notions is where the rubber meets the ball. Eating and exercising are two things that people tend to abuse or neglect. Having a life coach will help you set boundaries and goals beneficial to your health. A life coach will also give you the mental support you need to stay motivated. Even when we have all the ideas, we still struggle with incorporating them into our daily lives and acquiring the skills needed to make them happen. A life coach will get you started and keep you on track through your journey to a healthy future.

To book a free life skills assessment please contact life coach Doug Hauptman at (770) 265-6407.

Doug Hauptman Gives Insight About Success

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 05:04:14 GMT

Yes, anyone can indeed become an entrepreneur. However, the real challenge is how to become a successful one. Entrepreneurship is an act that requires substantive passion, hard work, and dedication. To emerge as a top-notch business icon in the world of commerce, it is necessary to buckle up for a ride of mixed experiences and happenings. Following that, it's also necessary to stay consistent no matter what life throws at you and keep your hustle alive.

Based in the state of Georgia, rip-roaring entrepreneur Douglas Hauptman is a fine example of someone who has emerged to become everything from nothing. This passionate personality is a businessman, software developer, business developer, actor, realtor, political activist, and whatnot. Douglas pursues multiple ventures and has achieved magnificent prosperity in each of them.

The thrilling entrepreneur has various startup companies which are running smoothly. He is the founder and CEO of AMARCO, an acronym for American MARketing COmpany , which develops innovative marketing solutions that combine best breed print and digital solutions. He is also the CEO of another American marketing company, AtlantaWebsites.com . Both of these companies provide excellent marketing techniques and demeanors to up your business game.

Douglas is also the managing member of Realty Venture Group LLC dba Mimosa Salon Suites which are leased to beauty professionals including hairstylists, estheticians, all-natural nail technicians, and massage therapists. He is also the managing director of Beauty Bar Med Spain Covington, GA, one of his startup companies focusing on beauty. Further, he is the managing director of Beauty Restoration Spa , a full-service laser medi spa.

His professional attributes extend to being the webmaster, server administrator, and internet marketing manager at the Sportaid/Mediad division of SRG Inc . They have developed an eCommerce system with complex options in X-Cart and have fully integrated it into Georgia via GTM. They are currently improving efficiency by developing EDI processes. Sportaid is a great place to work. Moreover, Douglas is the founder of Newton County Learning , where they teach business students practical internet marketing skills to help them achieve success through innovation and technology.

Douglas has a constructive entrepreneurial experience. He is running various startup companies which are reaching phenomenal heights. Whatever he becomes is a result of his self-made approach towards his career. He encourages young entrepreneurs and beginners to keep their spirits high and toil accordingly.

Evident is the actuality that success does not come easy. Entrepreneurs are repeatedly thrashed with failure and rejection. However, at that time, it is crucial not to lose your spark and rise again. It is widely advocated that if you fall seven times, stand up eight! Moving on, it is necessary to plan your route before starting to follow a set pattern. This helps assess the possible risks and dangers which one might encounter and thereby should prepare for them.

Further, once you have started your business career, it is paramount to purge the distractions, stay consistent, and focus on your niche. This will help you and your business grow to an exceptional level. One crucial aspect to consider is the gainful incorporation of innovation and technology in your business. This holds immense significance as the use of technology for marketing, and other business management avenues bring about your trade's outstanding performance.

Setting Boundaries is an Invitation for Passion

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 00:51:00 GMT

Balance cannot be achieved without boundaries and it’s up to you to set them!

Boundaries and Alignment

Simply put, boundaries are just another factor in the game of business. Setting boundaries is beneficial to our business because they protect us from unnecessary chaos and keep us professionally aligned. What I mean by professionally aligned is they keep our work and home life balanced and prevent us from burning out. I recently posted a blog, Signs of a Burnout and 4 Ways to Recharge , about why preventing a burnout is key to a successful business or entrepreneurship. Boundaries also keep us from chaotic situations such as running out of time or losing track of our goals because there is too much going on than we originally planned for. Even today, I am still learning how to set boundaries but one thing I do know is why they are important and why I strive to keep learning more about this staple factor in my business ventures.

The Move in the Game of Business

Think of your business as a game. With all the right moves, you will win. Boundaries are a game changer because they keep your focus balanced on all aspects of your business. If you focus too much on one area, you could miss opportunities in another. For example, if you spend 10 hours a week with your marketing team and only 1 hour a week with design, then design could become more disconnected. One reason we get stuck in these situations, where we spend too much time on something, is because we make the mistake of saying yes to everything and everyone! I understand it can be hard to say no when someone is pressuring you or even when you are really excited about something, but you should only say yes if the outcome will be mutually beneficial. Naturally, people will ask you for things from their perspective and what will benefit them. Finding a mutually beneficial decision will make both you and your client or employee’s time well spent. Setting boundaries within your time management will only result in your business running more efficiently and keep your head in a clear space!

Passion Has No Boundaries

There is a difference between passion and necessary work load. Passion is centered on the mission of our business and why we go to work every day. It’s also our desire to learn more about our work and drive to keep evolving. Work load is the weight of the tasks at hand and the energy that is required to complete them. When we feel fatigued or unmotivated, our work load is too heavy and we need to refresh our mindset and body. It’s important to distinguish the difference between passion and workload because we don’t ever want to set a boundary on our passion and the evolution of our mission in life. A boundary in our work life is only to protect our physical health and keep our creativity at its best. I cherish my family time as a father and husband, so over time I have learned a few tricks to weave together my work and home life without too much interference in either. For example, I take my laptop with me on vacation and do some work while I am relaxing or I will bring along books to read before I go to bed. I save sales calls and other higher energy tasks for a day in the office. If we can successfully integrate our work into our leisure, we can take vacations more often and feel less jam packed during business hours. If our workload overwhelms us, we start to lose passion and end up working because we have to versus because we want to.

Draw the Line to Value Time

Relationships we might encounter at work include employees, customers, and clients. One thing all of these relationships have in common is they require teamwork and respect. I work with many people on a daily basis and am always scheduling meetings and calls. I’ve learned firsthand how to manage a team and always follow these three rules:

Always follow through . Following through will result in beneficial communication and mutual respect between two people. It also creates a sense of trust and dependability.

Always be early . Respecting people’s time is a mandatory behavior and not doing so will prevent people from taking you seriously. When running a business, people want to know that you are passionate and driven about your mission. Showing up early and never being late shows that the business is your top priority. Using a scheduling app can help you keep track of meetings and allow others to pick times that work best for them while still insuring you are available. After a meeting or call, always make sure to thank the person for their time in a sincere manner.

Always be clear . Always have a clear agenda and be direct with what you are asking for or requiring. Your objective with clients is to qualify them and

make sure their expectations are met. Avoid too much small talk and always resort back to the agenda when conversations goes astray.

Setting boundaries within your work relationships will keep business bonds strong and give both parties a peace of mind and one less factor to worry about when it comes to work. Time is valuable and boundaries help to make sure that it is used efficiently both financially and physically. When we fail to set boundaries on our workload and among our relationships, we invite unnecessary chaos into our business and even more detrimental, we lose focus on our mission.

This consequence can have lasting effects on our success and business which is why working with a life coach should be considered in your business plan! As a life coach, I can give you a third party perspective and keep you aligned with your goals and aspirations. I can also find the root of any downfalls your feel your business in experiencing. Together, we can set boundaries and open more space for your passion and creativity in fulfilling your mission!

Start incorporating your business passion into your everyday life by contacting me, Doug Hauptman, at (770) 265-6407 so we can set up a consultation for life coaching and find a plan for your success. You can also reach me by emailing doughauptman@gmail.com or by leaving a message through my contact page. Thank you!

Doug Hauptman Explains How Strategies Contribute to Business Success

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Mon, 02 May 2022 04:58:56 GMT

Four Strategies Guaranteed to Boost Your Business!

How do Strategies contribute to Business Success?

In this time of millennial marketing, social marketing, and influencer outreach, there are simply thousands of strategies your business can use to reach your destiny. Fortunately, we look up to experienced business consultants who have profound knowledge and insights into the business flow. There are very few names in the industry with higher expertise. Based in England, a business tycoon with an extended clientele profile and earned experience from his professional career is known to be Douglas Hauptman.

His contribution to business consultancy, with the amount of knowledge he holds, makes him stand out of the queue. He has mentored numerous entrepreneurs across the world and he is still serving as a great source of motivation for many. He extended himself for the entrepreneurs who are facing obstacles and cannot cope with the business while working in it. Hauptman believes it's not only the amount of hard work that brings out the best results, but also conviction accounts for it a lot in the longer run. For the same, don't think up these strategies on our own, but we can look over the shoulders of businesses that succeeded in paving the way for the rest of us.

Douglas is a classic consultant who created an inspiring impression in the business world and has changed the dynamics of the business world. He shares insight about managing a workforce fun again for businesses. Looking closer, Douglas began to realize this consultancy is a pioneer in their own right because he has also cemented the way for four different business strategies we can all follow. Here are the strategies you could implement in your company and start seeing results fairly quickly.

1. Know Your Customer

The first rule any business owner should realize is the art of knowing your target market. Whereas it’s electrifying for some new business owners to want to sell their unique wares to the public, they sometimes forget to be excited about their target people.

Know your customer, and you will begin to see your business flourish more than ever. The business is a relationship. Hauptman explained it like this:

“Just as with any flourishing marriage, the more you know a person, the more likely you are to develop a close relationship with them, which yields love.”

Treat your customers well, and you will eventually get to see them coming back. Not only will you know and relate to them, but they will know, like, and develop trust and your brand.

2. Maintain a High Standard of Excellence

Though you are a business of one or extended workforce, you need to sustain a high standard. It is one reason renowned brands created success for themselves at such an early stage.

All the action and reaction develops something new and thrilling within your business. Ensure you and the rest of your team always react with this high standard of excellence because you have targeted people focusing on your brand.

This is the best time to persuade them and create a culture of loyalty and trust within your district. As long as they proceed to see you centered on this tune, you will always be sheltered.

3. Create a Personal Experience

Right after knowing your target audience, you begin to see which marketing strategies are more effective for them. People love customized plans designed especially for them that they can always relate to.

Customers associate brands with experience. The customer experience should always be your topmost priority when setting up a marketing strategy. On an impulse, the customer can destroy your goodwill or build it up either way.

Conversely, the customer is always set to relive the experience repeatedly with your brand as long as you continue re-framing it personally for them to some extent. Cater to their needs and wants and solving problems for full-fledged customer loyalty.

4. Create Engaged Employees

Hauptman factually focused not only on the business's consumer side but also on the internal strategies with their employees. He has never failed to inspire entrepreneurs.

As you must be knowing, engaged employees are people who comprehend how to love their work. If the employee is consecutively engaging with the brand, they are good communicators and brand ambassadors. These employees work just as hard on Monday as they do on Friday, and they are always there with a helping hand tactic.

Keep your employee engaged by essential and potential appreciations. It makes them feel unique and a vital asset to the company. Good work gone ignored can take its toll on an affianced employee, and you never want to overlook this phase of your business. Either way, something’s not working, and you need to reconsider your strategy.

These four tips from Hauptman are some original and business-boosting tips you can use to create more opportunities for business in marketing. Grasping hard on these tips can lead your brand to success.

Attract Positive Energy By Practicing Gratitude

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:22:11 GMT

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Understanding Gratitude

Gratitude is a concept that I learned about from a very young age. As a boy, I witnessed many tumultuous moments between my mother and father along with other troubles I came to experience. One of my good friends, at the time, turned me on to going to the southern Baptist church, where his father was a pastor. This church was in Oakland, California and packed with people every Sunday service. It was in this church, that I came to the realization that I should be grateful for my life and those who made my life possible.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

This is a quote from the Bible that I have always admired. Jesus had the strongest sense of gratitude, which in the end, resulted in the ultimate sacrifice of His life for those He loved. He gave up his life for the benefit of others. One story that I like to reminisce about, is when Jesus honored the lady who gave 2 cents even though the others presented the most lavish of gifts. Jesus recognized that the woman gave all she had and it’s because of this notion that we came to the existence of gospel and what it stands for. Her “2 cents worth” meant everything to Jesus!

Whether you believe in the Bible or not, the power of gratitude still remains. Gratitude does not come naturally, nor is it something that is given to you, and it must be practiced and embraced. We have to want it, ask for it, and receive it. We must have a spiritual foundation to guide us and the rest is purely spiritual.

At the simplest form, our inner self is the voice in the back of our head that we constantly listen to or question. This is a phenomenon that everyone experiences, regardless of religion or spiritual practice. Being grateful is simply using this voice, or guiding spirit, if you will, to remind ourselves on a daily basis that we are grateful for all that we have. Once we master this realization, and are genuinely honest with ourselves in the process, we will no longer rely on expectations to give us a fulfilling life. We will be able to sacrifice what we have for loves sake, and truly embrace gratitude for the things we do have. Your conscience will be your guide, and the key is to believe in where you are going.

When we experience gratitude, we are bringing positive energy into our lives and even the whole universe. Yet, be aware that demanding change or being complacent are both polarities to gratitude. If we put expectations on others or materialistic items, we will find ourselves in a continuous circle of disappointment and longing. Without a higher purpose or compassion, anything disappointing that comes our way will be detrimental to our mind and body. If we can have the mindset that everything we have in life is something to be grateful for, then no amount of deprivation can harm us. Be people of extreme grace and we will find the world is our oyster!

Practicing Gratitude

Habit

When I get up in the morning, I always say thank you. Over and over, like a mantra, I just say “thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!” I am thankful to God for the hot water rushing over my face in the shower and I am thankful for the meals He provides me with each day.

We can set an example of gratitude for those in our lives as one way to express our gratitude. I am grateful my daughter has picked up on this habit and I’m equally grateful that this habit has become a part of my psyche and who I am. When I find myself experiencing doubt or fear or even worse envy or jealousy, I ask myself:

“Am I being grateful?”

“What am I being grateful for?”

“Would I be grateful without the things I have?”

“If I lost my greatest possession, would I still be just as grateful?”

Finding a spiritual connection is a great way to get in the habit of gratitude because almost every practice includes this idea. Praying can be found in many religions and can be a way to calm our minds from outside chaos and remind us to stay grounded and, most importantly, to be grateful.

Sacrifice

When we think about sacrifice, we can think about what others gave up to bring us into this lifetime. All great things come from a sacrifice whether a baby from their mother or a job provided from someone else’s wealth. Every person we meet and thing we have, comes from a sacrifice. We can practice gratitude by sacrificing things in our own lives, for others. When we are fortunate enough to experience inner peace with gratitude, materialistic things will hold less value and we can contribute to a spiritual cycle of sacrifice and positive manifestation.

Our Higher Being

We may wake up someday and ask ourselves what we should do. Only you can answer this question because only you can master your life. Most people have so much pride that they simply cannot be honest with themselves and end up lost with only judgment and expectations. Connecting to our inner selves will be something that others will not always be able to understand because it is not scientific, but spiritual. Epiphanies about life can be twilight scenarios but are also some of the most powerful awakenings of all. When we stop feeling entitled to our lives and instead find meaning for them, we will always be content in any situation. It’s not that we won’t be unhappy, it will be that we cannot be unhappy. Sure we can make a scientific case about happiness, but the strongest case will always be within our spirituality and connection to our higher being.

How Gratitude Changes Us!

Gratitude is not only spiritually gratifying, but also benefits our physical and emotional health. Scientists try to provide answers as to why mental health supports physical health but this will always be an idea that cannot be proven but only felt and experienced. When we go too deep into the scientific reasoning, we miss the entire point. When we are grateful, our heart rate and blood pressure goes down and we become balanced. This can be scientifically discovered but not proven beyond our own personal emotions. People are also drawn to positive attitudes. No one wants to be around someone who complains or has a negative mindset. Why? Because it doesn’t feel right. Our intuition doesn’t need any further validation of this. If we aren’t grateful and we are always asking for more or complaining about what we have, then we will find ourselves alone by consequence, not choice. This experience can be extremely emotionally damaging.

If you find yourself having trouble finding gratitude, first try to find the root of this energy. Are you resentful or angry? The essence of gratitude is that it can change our perspective and everyone is capable of this shift. Gratitude cannot be learned instantly but with habitual practice, we can all master the mindset. Once we master gratitude, we will experience the supernatural effects which are so powerful and strong, they might as well be scientific. Many times, we think we need change to be happy or we feel guilty of complacency. However, if we find a perspective of gratitude in every aspect of our lives, we won’t need change and complacency will be ruled out entirely. Feeling complacent is a symptom of entitlement. We can always remind ourselves that we are capable of being better but thinking we deserve change only sets expectations that put our own responsibility onto someone or something else. Remember, our perspective decides whether we are happy or not.

Sharing Gratitude

I find enjoyment in helping others and this mission is my way of expressing gratitude for the things I have in my life. I experience joy when giving back by opening these doors of gratitude and connection for people who still question their purpose and understanding of life. I cannot give anyone the tools for gratitude, since that is a spiritual journey and different for each individual, but I can support anyone in practicing gratitude as a daily habit.

Imagine for a moment, that everyone in the world was happy, content and grateful. No more wars. No more need for divisions. I know it sounds like I’m just a dreamer, but just imagine yourself with this gift. You would find yourself on a path to contentment and, most importantly, pure bliss within your life. I want to help you take limitations out of your life and bring you to having faith in all that you want to be and create. Personally, I have faith that my afterlife will be a great borealis or a universal energy of knowledge that can spread over an entire realm of biological existence. I find this faith from my yearning to express my gratitude for this lifetime and give back the beauty that I was able to experience and accept.

Signs of a Burnout and 4 Ways to Recharge

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sat, 20 Feb 2021 21:23:19 GMT

Don’t just recover from the emotional and physical exhaustion, learn how to prevent it from the start!

A burnout is something that everyone will experience in their lifetime. Exhaustion, depression, lack of motivation, self-medication and even disease, are all typical responses to pushing both your body and mind beyond what is healthy and can lead to much more debilitating futures. We often focus on the consequences of overdoing ourselves when the root of the chaos can be found in what caused the burnout to begin with.

What causes a burnout is when we push ourselves so hard that we resort to self-medicating for performance while neglecting health lifestyle habits. For example, you might be extra productive at work but only because you have sacrificed your sleep, or taken a stimulant, to get more done. Although the financial impact feels rewarding in the moment, it will only be quickly taken back when you need to go to the doctor for sleep aid or miss a future work day from exhaustion. This example is exactly why balance is key to preventing burnouts and if you can prevent one from the start, you will not need to invest in and worry about the negative consequences that so many Americans find themselves experiencing.

One common misconception about vacation is that this getaway will recharge your energy and make life better again. A vacation, or any distraction, most likely will not fix your burnout because it will distract you from making the changes necessary to your life that caused the longing for the vacation in the first place. Younger adults tend to believe they are invincible and will work extra hard with the intention of deserving a vacation. You can earn a vacation but you deserve to always be balanced and not simply count on a temporary vacation to keep you healthy. In return, if you bring balance into your lifestyle, you will be able to enjoy vacations as a time to bond with your family or venture to new places, not just trying to recover in vain before the next work load. The more you are able to appreciate the heart of the vacation, the less your will need to financially spend on, what are most likely, distractions. If you are spending extravagant amounts of money, then you will have to work even harder to replace it. This cycle can go on and on for a lifetime. One example of a distraction versus a vacation is:

Distraction:

You book cruise tickets for your family. You pay for the suite and the finest champagne to drown your worries. You spend hundreds of dollars, in one day, on food and service. Everyone is looking to you for a good time and you feel pressured to provide because you longed for and bragged about this vacation for some time and you keep telling yourself you deserve it. The boat is packed and you find yourself reaching in your pocket vs sitting down to relax. The 3 day cruise is over and you return to work. You have no money in your account because you spent too much or, even worse, you had to use credit. As a result, you work harder to make up for the loss while falling into a place of remorse and shame for getting yourself in the situation to begin with. You need another break already and wish you would have just appreciated the beach. You think you deserve this guilt.

Vacation:

You decide to spend a day at the beach because good company and the beautiful scenery is satisfying enough. Instead of spending money on materialistic items, you reflect on life and appreciate the success that earned you the vacation. You feel at ease knowing you have to return to work soon and consider this getaway as a nourishment for your creativity and talents. You go home and realize that these vacations can take place more often because you maintained control and gratitude. As a result, you feel rejuvenated at work the next day and inspired with new ideas. More money flows your way from your positive attitude and motivation at work. You can go on a cruise next vacation because you earned it.

Learning to balance your leisure time does not come overnight. It takes practice, determination, and stepping outside your comfort zone. Having support and direction from a life coach will help you make this shift without getting, ironically, burned out! Not only do you need to balance your leisure time, you need to understand which activities will help recharge your spirit from working and prevent your longing for unrealistic vacations. Below are four practices that will help with this vital recharge:

Reflection: Reflection is the most important practice you can do to create balance and make changes. If you don’t take time to reflect, you can’t see the damages you may have instigated on yourself or reveal the base of your worries and struggles. Reflection can be hard to practice alone because you tend to stay within your comfort and not ask yourself the hard questions or criticize yourself in a productive way. A life coach will provide the emotional support and the positive motivation that you need in order to be completely honest with yourself.

Clear Your Mind: There are many ways to clear your mind and everyone has a different preference. Meditation, worship, art, and spending time with nature are all examples of a cleansing experience. A life coach can help you explore the different practices available to you or make the ones you have already established, a priority.

Have Fun : Make time not only for leisure but for recreation too. Recreation should be enjoyable and stress free. You need to make time for the small, significant distractions from your responsibilities so that you don’t end up seeking a big, and expensive, distraction like trendy vacations. A life coach will help you acknowledge what you truly enjoy and give you the confidence and tools to integrate these activities into your everyday life.

Physical Health: Your body is just as important as your mind and a part of your spirit. If you don’t take care of it, you will not be able to perform in the ways your heart wants to. A life coach will help you focus on adequate rest, a healthy diet, and avoiding drugs or alcohol. The body and mind are the ying and the yang of the spirit and should always be a priority.

Spa Manager, Chirstina Salantino, looked to me for guidance in balancing her work and personal life and I helped her gain the confidence she needed to take the steps necessary for alleviating stress related to work. She reflected on my coaching by claiming:

“He is a knowledgeable problem solver who is capable of providing strong guidance in almost any situation. He is a great coach who will listen intently.”

Any life coach can help you recover from the impacts of a burnout but my goal is to prevent you from experiencing one at all. Ultimately, if you stay balanced and in good spirit, your drive and future will continue to flourish and the word vacation will no longer linger in your needs each and every day. There are many steps and tools needed to accomplish a successful balance and I will help you identify and take advantage of them. The first step is understanding time management. How do you make sure you have time for leisure while still being productive at work?

During my life, I never stopped learning and accomplished many business ventures, sometimes 2 or 3 at once, yet remained healthy and more importantly, happy. I had to work relentlessly but I put my heart first in everything I did and mentally grew with my business. Time management became the building block for my success and fulfilling life. You can have all the pieces but if you don’t know how to efficiently fit them together, you will fall into the dangerous cycle I mentioned earlier. I have solved many puzzles in my lifetime and can easily identify problems while I, just as quickly, find solutions.

By sharing these tools with you, we can work towards creating the future you dream of while keeping you connected and grounded throughout the process.

Working For Your Life Purpose

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 03:58:24 GMT

What if your daily work could align with the goals you have for accomplishing your desires?

Everyone seeks to have a fulfilling life and it takes work, like all things in life do, to manifest one. Work can be thought of as negative or positive, but either way it is necessary to get to wherever it is you desire to be. The key to making work a positive experience is to work for your life purpose. If you are working and have no purpose for where you are headed, you will find yourself at a dead end. Before we dive into aligning work with your life purpose and goals, let’s first talk about how to identify what you want out of life.

Ask yourself the following questions:

“What do I value the most in my life?”

“What do I want more than anything during this lifetime?”

“Who do I want to be to the world?”

“What legacy do I want to leave behind?”

Only you can understand your purpose and you should never leave that decision up to someone else. Once you understand your purpose in life, you can set goals for yourself. Goals are important because without them, we have no sense of what we are achieving. Your goals are milestones along your journey to remind you that you have arrived. Goals can be every day reminders or a long timeline of expectations set on yourself. Write your goals down so that you can visualize them and make sure to reevaluate past goals so you can reflect on your accomplishments. Did I meet that goal? Did it go well or do I need to take further action? Everyone has a unique set of qualities and talents and by making goals and acknowledging them, you can set yourself up for not only optimal success, but enjoyment as well. With these two factors in play, your way to a fulfilling life will be clear.

Now that we have discussed what work is and what your goals in life are, we can begin to talk about how you can balance these two aspects. Balance is important because it allows for both sacrifices and fulfillment. If you live in a constant state of frustration or longing, you will never find the right balance of chemistry in your mind, body, and spirit. Ultimately, you may be left with a darkened spirit if you lose sight of balance. I call this “spinning out of control”. We lose motivation, confidence, happiness and depression sets in.

In order to balance work and your life goals, you need to understand what you are willing to sacrifice and what you value at no exception. Let’s face it, we all have to pay rent at the end of the day. But how much of your goals are you willing to leave behind in order to financially be secure? How do you balance financial security and mental fulfillment? One problem that people have with this concept is they think a sacrifice or hardship is forever, but it is not. Sometimes we must tolerate something in order to maintain our sanity along the journey to accomplish something much more rewarding. How much of your sanity you are willing to sacrifice is entirely up to you. When I was young, I was willing to sacrifice luxuries in life until I could pay for them with my own hard earned success. Eventually, those luxuries came along and I didn’t have to lose my soul in the process because I chose to work extra hard in an environment that supported the skills I wanted to learn for my end goal, regardless of pay. I worked and practiced for 60-80 hours per week for 20 years, until I eventually quit my “necessary evil” jobs and reached my goals. Often times, I worked 2 or 3 jobs while running multiple businesses, but I always balanced the work with my purpose. I never gave up on my desire to be self-sufficient and the sacrifice and hard work paid off to a priceless outcome. To me, having my own enterprise was the most fortunate future I could have.

Another goal of mine was to help people achieve the same satisfaction that I was able to create for myself while their journey is fresh and opportunities are unlimited. Balancing work values and goals is something every client struggles with and often times why they seek my coaching. Larry Convington, a client I coached in the past, said:

“I never feel overwhelmed with work and I always have time for family which is important to me. I can work efficiently and not worry about missing out on the important things in my personal life. Doug is the kindest person I know. He loves lending and helping, giving advice, and generally looking out for others well-being.”

I have worked with Larry for over 3 years and was able to watch him grow into the business man he had always aimed to be while also living out his life as a family man. These are the connections that remind me why balance is so important to a fulfilling life.

I can help you create a balance in your life and get onto the path of working for your life’s purpose by sharing my experiences, supporting your ambitions, and highlighting the trust that already exists within your higher self. You cannot trust anyone with your future except yourself but I can guide you along the way to this realization. Although I certainly did not invent the game, I definitely can teach you how to play with it excellence and play to win! Not only do I understand the soulful aspect to a fulfilling life, I also understand the financial and responsibility aspects. I offer business and executive coaching to business owners which I operate through a program that has been refined for the past 25 years. The program is delivered based on the books, E-Myth Revisited, The E-Myth Series and from the author of Beyond EMyth .

Every Calvary Step Was Love

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 17:17:03 GMT

Two weeks from today is Palm Sunday, and so will begin our reflection on the incredible love He gave...

We all know the story. How He was crucified for us. But how often do we actually think about what happened, really? How often do we express our gratitude for His great love? As we enter into Easter season let us not forget what it is really about. This is the time we remember His death and resurrection. This is the time of year we ought to be thankful for the gifts He gave us and mindful to how we share them.

In his death Jesus’s love for us was in every intentional step. In one sense, every step He ever took was for us. He was born to die. He came to give his life. His public ministry was ever a steady drumbeat toward Calvary. But in His last week, the quickly moving story begins to run in slow motion. Roughly half the Gospel accounts are dedicated to chronicle these final days.

Five years ago, John Piper wrote a memorable Holy Week meditation on Jesus’s intentionality and intensity. As intentional as were his steps toward death, so intense was his love for us.

If he was intentional in laying down his life, it was for us. It was love. Every step on the Calvary road meant, “I love you.”

And so to feel more deeply the love of Jesus for us, it helps to see more clearly how intentional he was in doing it. Here are the five ways Piper mentions for seeing Jesus’s intentionality in dying for us.

1) Jesus himself made choices precisely to fulfill the Scriptures.

“Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” ( Matthew 26:52–54 )

2) Jesus repeatedly expressed His commitment to go to Jerusalem — into the very jaws of the lion.

“See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.” ( Mark 10:33–34 )

When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem. ( Luke 9:51 )

3) Jesus spoke of his suffering in the words of Isaiah.

“I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.” ( Isaiah 50:6 )

4) Jesus handled the injustice of it all by trusting his Father.

When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. ( 1 Peter 2:23 )

5) Jesus was under no constraint, but acted completely voluntarily.

“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” ( John 10:17–18 )

Piper concludes,

When John says, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us” ( 1 John 3:16 ), we should feel the intensity of His love for us to the degree that we see His intentionality to suffer and die. I pray that you will feel it profoundly. ( The Intensity of Christ’s Love and the Intentionality of His Death )

How will you show your gratitude and thankfulness for His gift of sacrifice? What are you willing to sacrifice to show HIs love to those in your life?

Father, may Your love for us be evident in every intentional step we take this next Holy Week and throughout the year.

~ AMEN!

Much thanks and credit for this article goes to David Mathis ( @davidcmathis ).

Jesus is Love

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 17:19:09 GMT

Why we feel so alone, even in the midst of celebration…

It happens every February. Our attention turns toward Valentine's Day and the loved ones in our lives. We think of flowers and candy and romantic love and Cupid and all the things and images that bring us longing and desire for that one special love.

We have tried to create the perfect impression of the perfect marriage and the perfect family. Hearts and smiles and pretty faces. But for many of us underneath that facade is a cold emptiness and pain that is hard to endure. We think about our regrets and how we can fix the mistakes that we've made all the while trying to carry on as though nothing were wrong whatsoever.

This is why so many of us feel so alone, even in the midst of celebration.

But Jesus knows our pain and he knows the only way to get rid of it was to sacrifice HIs life. And so he did. So He loved us so much that He, even though we are and still and will always be in sin, gave His life so that we may have life eternal. That is perfect love. Agape love. The type of love that only He, the Son of God, could give.

This is the message of the good news. This is the message of the Gospel. But many people ask what does this have to do with me? How can this good news take away the loneliness and emptiness that I feel deep inside? The answer is simple. Follow his example. There is no blessing where there is no sacrifice. You must learn to sacrifice so that you may partake in the the blessings He offers. How and what those sacrifices are is between you and Him.

For some it may be staying right where you are, even though you feel frustrated and unfulfilled, because your sacrifice is that you should be a blessing for those around you. For others it may be making a sacrifice for a season while waiting on the right time to move forward in Peace and Freedom.

Whatever it is, whatever the situation in your life, just remember that whatever sacrifice and whatever pain you experience is not endured alone. So reach out to Him right now and ask Him help you and He will. Ask Him to forgive you and He will. Ask Him to give you strength and He will give you strength.

Right now, just say Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner, I believe that you came and died on the cross for me so that I can live life eternal, I accept you right now as my Lord and Savior and I thank You and I receive the blessings that You have in store for me both now and in the eternal, in Jesus name AMEN!

Now if you prayed that prayer you now have the green light to give and receive His love in a way that no earthly love can offer and this, in turn, will bring you the peace and joy you so desperately long for and need. Welcome aboard the love train!

The Body Needs Movement and More

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 16:47:26 GMT

Why we get so little, and where to find motivation…

People today move less than ever before. The decline has been swift: In just under two generations, physical activity has fallen 20 percent in the United Kingdom and more than 30 percent in the United States, according to one report . In China, physical activity has dropped nearly 50 percent in less than one generation.

The trend is costing us in dollars and disease. According to a 2018 report in the Journal of the American Medicine Association, the lack of physical activity in the United States alone is linked to $117 billion in annual health care costs.

The science is clear: When we don’t get enough activity, our bodies break down, resulting in a loss of bone density, stiffer joints, and weaker muscles. Organ function declines, and our cells produce less energy. The more we stagnate, the more we’re prone to injury, exhaustion, and chronic illness.

Move more, and your body gets healthier. Exercise has been shown to reduce stress, as well as improve mood and mental acuity, not to mention giving us a fitter and more functional physique.

The quality of our lives improves with exercise , and so does our longevity. A recently published study from the Cleveland Clinic looked at more than 122,000 patients for 23 years and found a strong correlation between higher physical activity levels and longer life.

We all know we should be moving more. So what’s holding us back? Why do only about 20 percent of Americans meet the minimum daily physical activity requirements that experts say we need to stay healthy?

The most common reason is a lack of time. For our ancestors, physical activity was baked into their day. The demands of life forced them to stay active. Today, as cars and trains carry us back and forth to mostly sedentary jobs, our physical demands are minimal, yet our time to pursue exercise is scarce.

Certified personal trainer and fitness instructor Sylvia Nasser says that modern life pulls us in so many directions—our jobs, our families, and even our social media—that exercise becomes an inconvenient chore that we lack the time or energy to meet.

“People’s energies are just not there,” Nasser said. “They are so stressed and overcommitted, so food and drinking become their comfort.”

Time may be tight, but ignoring the body’s need for movement is a foolish scheduling strategy. If we don’t make activity a priority, we actually lose time and efficiency in the long run. Our bodies become less able to meet the demands of life, and we develop a higher risk for cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, cognitive decline, cancer, and early death.

“Lack of exercise literally brings on the deterioration of the body, the mind, and the mood,” Nasser said. “If people exercised more, they’d be more creative, efficient, and productive in their jobs.”

So how do we juggle a long commute, longer work hours, and the rest of our busy lives both on and offline while still finding time to exercise? Meghan Lyle , a registered dietitian, nutritionist, and personal wellness coach, knows it’s tough to fit activity into our day. So she recommends finding ways to make it personal. For inspiration, Lyle encourages us to “look far and look inside.”

“By ‘look far,’ I mean look far ahead in the distance to envision what you want to be doing and experiencing in the decades at the end of your life,” she said. “What will exercise change about that experience? Being more fit and healthy will probably have far-reaching impacts, no matter how you want to spend your later years.”

By looking inside, Lyle means becoming mindful of what exercise does for you in the moment. When you finish a good workout, consider how you feel.

“How’s your mood? Do you feel empowered and accomplished? Do you have more energy? Remembering this feeling could motivate you for next time,” she said.

Small Effort, Big Impact

Once you’re ready to take on some exercise, experts stress starting small. Lyle recommends little things such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator or finding a parking spot a little further from the store. For the next step, try fitting in a 10-minute walk, or simple exercises at home.

“You don’t need a full home gym,” said Lyle. “Many resistance exercises require only body weight, like planking.”

People who have been sedentary for years may have to start really slow. But you have to start somewhere. Lori Zabka , a certified personal trainer and nutritional coach, says that even if it seems like we have little time (or energy) to spare, we can turn things around by seizing the moment.

We may not see a point in exercising unless we have a full 45 minutes or more to devote to it. While an extended period of activity is great, Zabka urges us to drop the all-or-nothing mentality and accept the fact that a few moments devoted to movement can still have value.

For example, instead of scrolling through your phone or flipping through channels, try getting up and walking around, or do some light stretching. These simple gestures can start a positive cycle. The more you move, the more your body starts to crave movement.

“I truly believe that energy begets energy, and movement begets movement,” Zabka said. “You don’t even need to break a sweat. Just move that body.”

Just adding a little extra exercise to our day can have a profound effect on our future health. It may also positively impact the health of the next generation.

In a 2018 study published online in the journal Diabetes , researchers concluded that parents who started exercising could prevent obesity and diabetes from being passed to their children. The study looked at male mice who began a moderate exercise routine just three weeks prior to conception. Their offspring were born with better glucose metabolism and increased insulin sensitivity compared to mice sired from sedentary dads.

Kristin Stanford , assistant professor of physiology and cell biology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center who led the study, previously witnessed similar results of improved metabolism with female mice who exercised before conception. However, the physical activity of each parent also brought different benefits to the table. Active moms gave birth to children with better liver function, and active dads saw offspring with better skeletal muscle function. These results were seen in both male and female offspring.

Based on the results of her study, Stanford believes it wouldn’t take much extra activity for human parents-to-be to make a major difference in their child’s well-being.

“Exercise is just incredibly important for both your short-term and health and the long-term health of your children,” Stanford said. “It doesn’t have to be running a marathon. It’s just about getting off the couch and doing something. Anything seems to make a difference.”

Find Your Motivation

Regular exercise is like a health insurance policy. But instead of paying for it with money, we shell out time and effort.

Greg Pignataro , a certified strength and conditioning specialist, explains that the state of our health owes to something called the SAID principle. SAID stands for specific adaptation to imposed demands. It’s a fancy way of saying that the body adjusts to the level of activity it’s asked to perform.

If we run, jump, and lift weights, our bodies develop strength and endurance to adapt to physical stress.

“The human body is very much a use-it-or-lose-it machine,” Pignataro said. “This works in people’s favor when they regularly exercise because they are routinely asking their bodies to be able to do things that are more challenging than normal activities of daily living.”

However, you spend most of your day sitting, your body adjusts accordingly. You might not notice these problematic adaptations until you have to do something a little more strenuous.

“In this case, you are much more likely to injure yourself while carrying heavy grocery bags or doing yard work,” Pignataro said.

Some benefits of exercise are immediate—one great workout can noticeably brighten your mood and lift your spirits. But a lot of the payback we get from physical activity takes time to emerge. Muscles can take months to grow; fat can take years to lose. And in a world of instant gratification, not everyone is prepared to wait.

Jeanette DePatie , a self-described plus-sized certified fitness instructor and regular exerciser for 30 years, says people can lose their motivation because the results they’re hoping for don’t come as fast as they would like.

“So often we mess people up with unrealistic expectations about how exercise will make them look,” DePatie said. “And what happens when after six months of your brutal ‘look like Angelina Jolie by summer’ plan you still look like Angela Lansbury?”

To help avoid this pitfall, Courtney Donaldson , owner of One Fit Mom Fitness, advises her clients to ditch the scale. She says that many people get frustrated after a few weeks at the gym because their weight stays the same, and that’s when they give up on their fitness journey.

We all want to see results from our hard work, but Donaldson recommends following other indicators to measure your progress, such as your energy levels and sleep patterns.

“Sure, weight loss is a big motivator for most people, but there is so much more to this lifestyle,” Donaldson said. “The internal benefits of exercising far outweigh anything, in my opinion.”

Stacey Rosenfeld , doctor of psychology and fitness professional, says regular exercise can enhance our self-esteem, help us to feel strong and empowered, and give us a sense of mastery.

But Rosenfeld says people are often resistant to exercise because they aren’t approaching it intuitively.

“They’re forcing themselves to do activities they don’t want to do. Not surprisingly, motivation is low, and the behavior isn’t sustainable,” she said. “If the gym isn’t your thing, why go? Find what is your thing.”

According to Rosenfeld, the best way to start is to find an activity (or activities) that you truly enjoy. This might be gardening, a dance class, or perhaps roller skating. Find something that you can do again and again. Next, create a sustainable routine. Once you’re going strong, remember to allow yourself days to rest so you don’t burn out.

Another tip toward a sustainable exercise routine is to be realistic. Know your limits, and don’t set yourself up for failure.

“If you don’t think you’re going to get up at 5 a.m. to exercise before work, don’t set that goal,” Rosenfeld said. “Find a way to incorporate movement into your schedule in a way that feels reasonable.”

Full credit for this article goes to Conan Miller and The Epoch Times

Discover Your Purpose

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 17:42:45 GMT

There's more power in your self than you imagined. Be ready to explore.

Not too long ago, people used to live life in a very similar fashion... they would go to school, get a degree, get married, have a family, and work all of their lives in one place until they retired. Life Purpose was not a common topic for discussion. Most assumed they were living life doing what they were supposed (or meant) to do and seldom questioned it. Unfortunately, many were unhappy and blindly accepted the idea that this was their given life path and there was not much to do about it.

Today, we live in a world of constant changes. Life has become more "complicated"; we expect more, we live less, and we are unhappy more often than not. In general, people live in agitation, feeling anxious and stressed out. Many are becoming aware of the strange sensation of emptiness even when their lives appear to be somewhat "normal".

They feel unsettled and as if there was something more to life... Countless people are not happy about their lives, their relationships, their jobs and find it difficult to feel fulfilled no matter what they do. Some may even feel guilty about this feeling as they consciously realize they have everything to be happy yet they are not... and to top it all off, they can 't figure out the reason behind this nagging feeling.

More often than not, people are not living to their full potential which leaves this feeling of emptiness as a byproduct. And sadly, most are clueless as to how to find their true calling in life.

Does any of this resonate with you? The answer to this common problem could be as simple as discovering your life purpose. As you read this, two questions may come to mind... how do I discover my own life purpose? And is it a complicated process to go through?

While it can take some work, it 's not nearly as complex as some believe. Here are a few tips to help you discover your life purpose.

1. Time for Introspection.

Take some time to be just with yourself. Who are you? What makes you tick? What are you passionate about? What have you accomplished in the past that made you feel fulfilled? What moves you? These are some questions to get you going. Use your imagination to see yourself in particular scenarios that you believe will bring you the most happiness while serving for a cause. Allow yourself to feel "there" for the time being... how does it feel? Do you feel thrilled from the heart? Do you feel you 're willing to do whatever it takes to make that dream a reality? Do this exercise as many times as needed until you find yourself living in bliss in your imagination. Jot down important feelings and points as you do this.

2. Be Patient.

Know that the process to discover your life purpose it 's not an exact formula. We are all different people with unique experiences, talents, values and strengths. Do not rush the process or give up thinking you 'll never get it. Be realistic about this. Be determined to find your unique purpose while being compassionate with yourself. Be persistent and take your time... it 's your life.

3. Be Congruent.

Congruency is one important aspect to live a life of fulfillment. Your emotions, your thoughts, your values and your actions must be all aligned and congruent with each other for your life purpose to come to live. When you are authentic, you become passionate. At that point, you are on target to live a life on purpose.

4. Have Faith.

Having faith in both, yourself and a Higher Power, will help in bringing your life purpose to clarity. Trust the process and know that you will eventually find your calling. Having an inner feeling -and knowing- that you are "here" for a specific reason and to fulfill a mission, will help your process along.

5. Seek Help.

We live in a high paced world where our minds have been cluttered with an enormous amount of data which could prevent us from identifying our mission in life. We may feel at a loss as we discover we "like" many things and are not sure about how to proceed. We may even have hidden blocks that could prevent us from moving forward. This is a common situation that can make identifying our one passion a bit more complex. It can also make the process a bit confusing. If this is your case, hiring a Life Coach may be a great move. He or she can offer you the support and guidance to help you along your path.

Finally, consider that there are as many reasons as there are inhabitants in this planet to live a life on purpose, but two seem to be universal to us all...

When you discover your life purpose you become an asset to your family, your friends, your community and to society as a whole, because you are contributing to the life purpose the human race as a whole, that of being of service.

At the same time, you live in harmony with yourself. This translates into inner peace, health, joy and satisfaction. You discover you are not "working for a living" anymore but living for a reason as you share your talents for the betterment of all. Interestingly, this seems to be not only an individual objective but a common aspiration for all of us no matter what we choose to pursue in life.

Technology Makes Us Less Intelligent

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 17:47:17 GMT

It's time to stop trusting the future to tech giants!

As the world continues to evolve we must ask ourselves this question: is the world changing for the better? In my opinion, it is not. I believe the "change" of the world refers to the technological advances. As technology grows, human jobs are replaced with advanced machinery, the next generation appears to get less intelligent, and human contact is replaced by other devices.

As technology has continued to take over the world, human jobs have been taken over by factories and computers. Human labor is simply not valued as much. Simple things like email and texting lead to the cut of post office jobs because stamps are not necessary, thus lower wages for the employee. Due to the economic recession, my local library has cut down on the number of employees and they have been replaced by self-check out machinery. We should be concerned as this practice continues to grow at a rapid pace. With a economic downfall, we do not need a greater increase in the unemployment rate.

As we introduce more modern gadgets, kids of America seem to focus more on texting, emailing, and wasting hours on the web instead of doing something productive with their time. They focus less on school work and rely on the computer to do work for them. This also can lead to plagiarism when laziness sets in.

And what they are learning about socialism and anti-American propaganda is simply breathtaking. I'm pretty sure Alexander Hamilton would decry these tech giants as traitor to the nation and worthy of the noose.

Do yourself a favor a cut away from all the tech stuff once in awhile and read a book. Your brain will thank you for it!

Let God Lead

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 17:48:38 GMT

The Road to Success is Right Here

He is our personal Guide and Teacher in this life. If God puts a call on your life, but you do not follow His specific instructions and leadings on how to get there, then you will never succeed.

Today is the first day of the year and I'm reminded of the tremendous challenges that we Christians face. I am encouraged after having read about the story of Joshua. You can read it right here .

So we all know the story about how Moses defeated the Egyptians and freed God's people so they could enter into the Promised Land. However not many of us think too much about what happened afterward. Basically Moses couldn't effectively lead God's people there because the people had so much fear. So God made them trudge about in the wilderness for 40 years as a test and to purify them.

So then God let it be up to Joshua and Caleb to lead the people to the promised land after the 40 years. It was fear which resulted from a lack of faith that cost them that 40 years. God made sure that all the people of little faith died out and that only those with pure faith were allowed to reach the Promised Land.

We can apply this story to our lives in many ways. But specifically I think in today's tumultuous time we Christian's can focus on three lessons to help us fulfill our promise and complete our journey.

First. Jesus came and died on the cross so that we might live and fulfill our promise with complete confidence and without fear. He cleared the way, having died and risen after three days for the forgiveness of sin. But we must choose to give our lives completely to him, we must accept Him as our Lord and Saviour. He is calling you by name right now and is telling you to fear not!

Second. For many of us we find that we have lived the first part of our life as if wandering in the wilderness. At the point that we are really and truly born again our lives take on new meaning and head toward a new direction. All the time we spend leading up to that point is like wandering in the wilderness. The Lord was preparing us for the great task he has for us.

Third. When we move forward boldly and in complete faith God will provide everything we need to overcome every obstacle. It is from the Holy Spirit that he pours out supernatural power and gifts that allows us to move confidently to victory. We will not only see clearly what the great calling is, but we will be able to effortlessly identify with what gifts He has bestowed upon us and exactly how to use them. With Jesus at the wheel you won't have to force anything. It will happen as if it was always meant to be, because it was!

I believe this is a time that God is calling you to fulfill your great mission in life. Your great purpose is right in front of you. Right now. All you need is to let Jesus lead you and anything and everything is possible!

If you would like me to pray with you to ask The Lord to guide you and reveal what your great mission is please do not hesitate to contact me, I am here to help in any way I can.

May the Lord Bless You and Keep You - AMEN!

A Prayer for Joy

doughauptman@gmail.com (douglas hauptman) — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 22:37:29 GMT

Joy to the world……

the Lord has come!

It wasn’t the royal arrival anyone anticipated. And yet, Jesus’ appearance changed everything. In an instant, the Son of God became “God with us”—and over 2,000 years later, our weary world is still rejoicing.

Today, as you prepare for Christmas, spend some time celebrating that Jesus’ humble birth prepared a way for us to draw near to Him.

A Prayer for Joy

Jesus, thank You for becoming Immanuel, “God with us.” It’s because of You that I can experience true joy.

I admit that it can sometimes feel hard to be joyful in the middle of a busy or difficult holiday season. But when the cares of my heart are many, Your comfort gives me renewed hope and cheer.

So today, I choose to take refuge in You and rejoice. I will sing for joy because You are my strength and my salvation. In Your presence there is fullness of joy! And because of Your humble arrival over 2,000 years ago, I am now able to experience the joy of Your presence forever. Thank You.

You are always worthy of all glory, honor, and power—and so no matter what I face, I will choose to worship You.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

doug-hauptman

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Joy to the world…… ﻿

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