From Tim's Library of Quotes.  Want them all - just ask him.

“If it’s complicated the answer is simple - stop making it complicated.“

Life is like a game of chess.

Life is like a game of chess.

Tim Connor

I’m not a chess player but over the years I have watched many of my friends play the game.  But I can play checkers – not that it matters. Recently as I was watching a couple of friends play the thought occurred to me that chess is a lot like life – it’s uncertainty, it’s adventure, it’s exhilaration and yes, it’s a disappointment.  Watching caused me to consider three life areas;

-Why do we make the moves we do?

Every day we all make decisions – some small ones, some insignificant ones and often some major ones.  Do we take this move now or wait?  Do we let go of this or hold on? Do we say yes or no to this opportunity?  Do I take a new route or play it safe and take the one I always do? Do I share these thoughts or keep them to myself?  Hundreds of not thousands of routine choices and decisions every day. Some easy and some more difficult but in the end, we have a choice – do it or don’t, make it or don’t, try it or don’t, say it or don’t.

Every choice, action, and decision we make has a consequence – some are potentially positive and some negative, some are short term and some may take a while to come to fruition and often a few can be either a disaster or amazing.

I’m not going to dig into the weeds in this article about the best decision approaches to take as I have written several articles dedicated to this topic - all I want to do with this one is to make sure that you grasp the concept of reality and relationship between what you want, what is and how the relationship between these two approaches ultimately determines the outcomes you end up with.

In chess, every move matters, and yes some can be more crucial than others depending on how your opponent (life) reacts or responds to your moves. We can’t control how our opponent chooses to pay their next move, all we can do is try and react as best we can given our options based on their (life’s – starting to see the relationship here) previous move.

If their (life’s) move puts us in a corner limiting our options, well, do we cave in and just let them (life) win and just quit or do we keep looking for a different or better strategy or approach to try and regain our control of the game and its potential ending?

Life will never stop sending us challenges, opportunities, options, dead ends, problems and chances and for us to - change, grow, improve or mature or to default back to what is comfortable regardless of whether it works or not or improves things or not. Life is relentless and no matter what choices we make or challenges we overcome, there are always others waiting just around the corner to keep us focused on improving vs. settling or quitting.

-In hindsight do we wish we had made different movers?

Regardless of your knowledge, experience, education, and wisdom, you can never know what is waiting in the wings that will cross your path tomorrow whether you are ready or not or how the decisions, choices, and options you have today will turn out tomorrow.  I can move my chess piece, but I have no idea how you will respond, I just have to wait and see and them move accordingly.

Trying to outsmart life is stupid – what it wants us to learn to do is make the best moves possible given our resources, faith, courage, and wisdom.  Plans are great if you could control life.  Knowing is great if things never changed. The future is within your understanding if it always performed according to history and rules. Your life would be easy if you always made the right decisions – the problem is that the right decision or choice made today could in the future turn out to have been a wrong decision in the past and why? It’s called “life” folks.

-What do we learn regardless of whether we win or lose?

Learning is an interesting concept when you think about it.

You learn a new skill, hobby or process after spending time evaluating, practicing and repeating the tactics until they are mastered. A question – have you ever learned anything in your life in the past from (parents, schools, seminars, books or just plain experience) that for any reason is not still true or relevant today?  If your answer is no – it’s for one of two reasons – 1) you have been living in a cabin in the mountains with no human contact of any kind for your entire life or 2) you are the smartest person who has ever lived in the history of humanity.

So, the rest of us are given new learning options every day of our lives and we can choose to embrace these opportunities or resist or reject them.  But, one thing life has taught me over the years is that when I refuse to learn a lesson it wants to teach me and it believes I need to learn, it will keep coming back again and again from – a different person, different source or different situation.  It will be relentless.

In the end, learning is not the end of anything it is simply the willingness and ability to let go of conventional wisdom, existing attitudes or opinions and skills or approaches that are just no longer working, effective or useful.

Think about it – do you still sell, market, read, cook, travel, garden, communicate exercise etc. today the way you did last week, last year, ten years ago or even fifty years ago?  If you are – Checkmate!

It's Valentines Day

It’s Valentines Day - by, Tim Connor

and some women, who have crossed my path - have touched my heart, while others have brought me face to face with my soul, in those quiet moments when I was alone with my hopes and fears - dreams and pain.

Some forced me to shed the protective shell I had spent years erecting for my defense, others, unlocked the door to that mental room where my secret needs and desires lived.

Many passed through quickly without leaving a trace or a memory etched on my mind. Some lingered a while leaving their essence permanently stored in my heart.  And a few, have a special place in the deep recesses of my soul where I can hear their counsel and feel their love.

A few have taught me to love; many to hide, some to share and others to cry, some to withdraw and others to laugh and a very special few to feel and express that which was hidden for so very long.

They taught me the consequences of poor judgment, the joy of birth, the gift of life, and the pain of abandonment.

But through it all, I have come to cherish all the women I have known in my life; their honesty and their expectations, their anger and their sensitivity, their criticism and their passion, their guidance and their love. On this special Valentines Day,

Some of you may be blessed to be in the presence of your one true love.

I wish you happiness and peace as you travel your path to eternity with your special one.

Some, may have recently left a love behind.  To you, I wish a speedy journey through your pain and loneliness, your fear and the tears.

Others of you may be still searching for that one special love.  To you, I wish you an end to your search, that your true love finds you around the next corner of your life.

And finally, to all those who spend your days and nights wondering why you are with a person who; leaves your desires unsatisfied, and an emptiness in your heart, fantasies in your mind and questions in your soul, do not give in, or give up.  Do not settle. 

This life is far too short to spend the hours and the years in quiet inner loneliness.  Only you know the pain that penetrates your every thought, your every dream.

To all of you, I wish you love that lasts and is real, I wish you peace and quiet knowing,  and I wish you joy and satisfaction, on this Valentines Day, and I thank each and every one of you for the blessing you have been in my life.

Words, words, words - it's action that matters

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Regrets . . . or lessons learned?

Regrets or lessons learned

Tim Connor

Regret can have a significant negative impact on every aspect of your future – your career, relationships, health and even your happiness and why?  Well for starters it keeps you stuck in the past, something that you can’t do anything about.  But just as important it can have a major negative impact on your present and your future.  Basically, regret is how we choose to define the past - decisions, actions, outcomes, experiences and even people in our life.

Another way to view these decisions, circumstances and the rest is to see them as lessons learned.  The only problem with this approach is you must do some “inner work” to discover what the learning could be or have been. But let me get back to that in a minute or so.

Let me give you just three quick examples of where regret can dramatically impact the rest of your life.

First – in your health – Let’s say in an earlier part of your life you were a smoker, druggie or ate like an idiot. Let me ask you, you have left these actions in the past for many years, but you regret not having the discipline or common sense to not indulge in these behaviors.  It’s later in your life and you now have – COPD, heart issues, joint problems etc. that were mainly caused by these earlier behaviors. OK, so it’s too late to change the past but you spend far too much time in the present beating yourself up because of these stupid mistakes.  Let me ask do you think these thoughts could be having a negative impact on the present?  If your answer is no – wake up.

Second in your career – At an earlier time in your career when you didn’t have the maturity or common sense to excel you made some bad or even stupid decisions. Unfortunately, one of them caused you to be terminated from your position at a time in your life when that was very detrimental on other life areas like finances, relationships and your progress towards success.  Over the years you struggled to finally land the position or opportunity that you felt you deserved or were entitled to but for some reason it never crossed your path and you lived with almost daily disappointment and regret over your “long ago” bad choices.  Let me ask you – do you think staying stuck in this previous mindset is helpful in your present?  Starting to see a trend here? No, Ok, well one more quick example.

Third in relationships – Ever spent too much time, energy or resources on a relationship that was going nowhere or ended badly and in hindsight you regretted not ending it sooner, or never starting it, or being a better person in it?  Been there?  If not, I’m guessing you are close to the “perfect” person, but no one knows it but you. So, the regret is not waking up and paying attention sooner but for some silly reason - - hope, love, infatuation, poor self-esteem – whatever – kept you stuck in la-la land, denial or wishful thinking but in the end, deep down inside you - you knew it wasn’t right for some reason but stuck with it.  Flash forward a few years and here we go again in another relationship, marriage or romantic fling and guess what keeps filling your mind – “what if this is happening again and I’m not getting it?  Been there? Do you think these thoughts (regrets) may just have an impact on your current situation?  Duh.

There are numerous other examples I could give like – previous opportunities not embraced, previous investments made or not made etc.

OK, the other option is to see these life situations, circumstances or people not as regrets but as lessons to be learned or teachers that were in our life to help us learn the right lessons along the path into the future.  And how can life expect us to do this during turmoil, frustration, pain, discouragement, anxiety and yes regret.  It’s simple but not easy and here are just a few ideas to consider, embrace or apply to change your mindset from defining who you are to becoming who you can be.

-        Let the invalidating, negative, whining, pessimistic and self-righteous people in your life go. The more time you spend with them, the more you will feel life is not fair, you are a victim and you deserve what you want or need whether you deserve it not. Be careful who you are around – they are influencing you every minute of every day.

-        Get out of mental “auto-pilot”.  Start spending real time and energy evaluating stuff in the present and not using the past or the future as the guidelines for evaluation.  You don’t know what the future holds no matter what you do or don’t do, and you certainly can’t change the past.  So, if you want to have less regret in the future spend time figuring out what you are doing and not doing now and – why or why not.

-        Get some coaches and/or mentors.  Join a Mastermind group.  Have some life advisors you trust. Stop trying to do it all on your own.  Take stuff to them and ask for guidance.  Doesn’t mean you will or have to take it or not.  But if you don’t get it you can’t take it.

-        Accept the simple truth that you can only get better and learn more from mistakes, bad decisions and stupid actions.  If life is sailing along for you day after day with no challenges and adversity – trust me – you are learning nothing.  Embrace failure. Say thank you for challenges and then use them as learning tools not excuses to feel sorry for yourself, self-pity or even uselessness.

-        There’s a lot more, but here’s just one more for the road. You were not put on this earth to whine, complain and do nothing with the time you have been given.  You were put here to grow, help others, and leave your personal world no matter how small or big, a better place.  You can’t do these if you are stuck in the mud or mindsets of fear, greed, ego, arrogance and pride.  Want to make a difference – get busy making a difference – one person and one day at a time.