"Be a lifelong student. The more you learn, the more you earn and the more self-confidence you will have." – Brian Tracy

By my own thoughts I can become the man I choose. Nothing can stand in my way. I can choose to be, have, or do anything. This is what I was meant to be. A new life, a new opportunity for change.

I have not because I want not. I am not because I did not. I am who I am as a result of the decisions I made in response to the choices presented to me. I cannot choose every obstacle that enters my path, but I can choose my action(s) in response to the challenges presented to me.

“I think, therefore I am.”

Self-discipline is the key to self-control which can become self-mastery, and thus – resurrection.

“Cogito ergo sum.”

I’ve started another project which I call, “Expanding Vocabulary“. If you are interested in learning new words please bookmark this page and come back often.

Here’s an excerpt from the Project page:

I am steadily, and increasingly dumbfounded at the words used by people with which I come in contact. I have learned a substantial percentage of the words I use from reading books. On that same subject, I find it laughable how many people have told me, “I hate reading.”

Brian Tracy wrote a book called ‘Maximum Achievement’ and in it he explains the power of saying, “I like myself”. This, and many other phrases are, or can be considered positive affirmation statements. I have to agree, there is real power in speaking these words out loud. I have decided to develop, and post my own list of positive affirmation statements:

I like myself.
I respond positively to negative situations, circumstances and information.
I am a successful father.
I am a caring husband.
I weight 170lb.
I run every day.
I play the piano.
I am financially independent.

The list is endless of words you could say to help boost your feelings of self-worth. These words, when spoken aloud will begin to work on/with your subconscious mind to create the ideal you. If you feel a little down about yourself, or would like to feel better about yourself, begin by saying, “I like myself” out loud, at least 10 – 20 times a day.

The point is to come up with a list, and read the list aloud, with conviction. You say these words, to yourself, with belief and purpose. In my example, above these are not all currently true. I’m not financially independent, but I plan to be. It’s not quite as effective if I were to say, “I will be financially independent”, or worse “I hope to be financially independent”. Your PSAs need to be present-tense, positive and they will work. Do not use negative words, like “don’t, not, wouldn’t, can’t”, etc.

Try it. Develop your own list, or (at the least) try saying “I like myself” every day. Post your comments below and be sure to tell how it’s been working for you in your life.

(I apologize for the implied explitives in the title of this post, they were, however, necessary.)

Admittedly, a better title might have been “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify”, but either way – my point is it’s time for me to rein in some things in my life and “trim off the fat”. I’m all over the place, so much so that a friend on Twitter made a comment about my far-reaching social networking appearance (not influence), and asked how I manage to maintain it all. The truth is, I don’t maintain much of anything, anymore, or ever have. I need to close a few accounts, delete a ton of email addresses and K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

At one point in time I had the grand idea of creating an email address, for every account, everywhere on the internet (the unnecessary commas have been added for an intentional…momentary, but rather obnoxiously…long…pause). I chose to use the prefix “i83.” to begin each address, for example: i83.facebook@gmail.com. This email, of course would be used as my login/contact email address for…you guessed it – Facebook! I also had, among others, i83.itunes, i83.redbox, etc. (You don’t even want to know how many there actually are…nearly 2 dozen.)

I admit, I’m a little OCD and I’m having a hard time coming to grips with actually deleting, and discontinuing the use of these email addresses. It feels “clean”, and it made sense to me when I did it, albeit I can’t remember why, but I’d like to think it was a reasonable idea. It is, however difficult to remember whether or not I’m using a custom address, or stephen@bruington.com, which is my personal, ‘everything else’ email address.

In order to simplify I feel it’s necessary to cut down on the number of accounts I have, but do not (for many reasons) maintain. I have written about, and even tried this before: http://blog.stephenbruington.com/tag/migration, but this time will be different, right? ;)

Here’s the thing, I have accounts at places I know nothing about. Yep, little old me has probably already been to your website and established a username/password, etc. I’ve been on, logged into and/or used these, and many more: blip.fm, last.fm, facebook.com, twitter.com, bebo.com, orkut,com, linkedin.com, friendfeed.com, posterous.com (Haha! Thanks for hosting my blog.), wordpress.com, tumblr.com, livejournal.com, typepad.com, typingweb.com, plaxo.com, rememberthemilk.com, stikkit.com (which, by the way was the BEST ever note, memo, sticky message website…ever), gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, flickr.com, photoshop.com, gmx.com, meebo.com, AIM, Skype, ICQ, myspace.com, and many, many others. Wow!

Do I really need all that stuff? No, I don’t. I know I don’t, but I think I have a problem…an addiction. I would like to keep the following:

Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, tumblr, posterous, flickr, Skype, Photoshop.com, and maybe a few others. I could write a book about all these sites and why I’ve used them, but I don’t think anyone would read it. In fact, if you’ve made it this far you’re either my wife (thank you Sweetheart), or crazy!

C.Y.A. – yes, the ‘A’ stands for what you think it stands for. I don’t have a real good reason for using it as part of my title other than the fact that the internet is filled with identity-stealing goons and…quite frankly, I’m exposed. I need to CYA and get rid of a lot of these sites with my information. If you’ve made it *this far, please do not SPAM my email inbox. I realize I posted my email address to the world, but I don’t believe anyone will use it to contact me anyway, so what the heck.

That’s it. I need to consolidate and do away with a lot of useless accounts, and unused (by ME) websites. Thanks for reading, I’ll let you know, at a later date what I decide to do, and how the cleanup is going, and/or turns out.

Earlier today I received call from a woman speaking on behalf of her daughter. It turns out her daughter is 25 years old, has cerebral palsy and is a Medicare beneficiary. I immediately “warmed” to this woman due to the soft spot in my own heart for people touched by cerebral palsy. (My daughter, who is 8 years old, has cerebral palsy.)

I followed Medicare, and UnitedHealthcare policies and procedures while gathering information on both the mother, and her daughter. I wasn’t able to speak with the daughter, at the time so I had her mother provide me everything I needed and we proceeded to discuss plan benefits.

We found, in her area, a PFFS (Private-Fee-For-Service) plan that would meet ‘the daughter’s’ needs and determined we could complete enrollment today. I finished documenting her account (in our Customer contact/management system) and was just about to begin the enrollment when I realized, I haven’t spoke with the daughter!

Just before the enrollment I put the mother on hold and asked for help. It turns out that ‘the mother’ does not have POA (Power of Attorney) and as such we would have been unable to enroll her daughter in this plan. (Normally I would give her my phone number, and extension and have her call be back. It’s important to note that UHC does not operate “normally”. At this point, I’m NOT ALLOWED to give out my phone number and extension on inbound sales calls. Which means if I don’t close the sale, I lose it.)

My idea (at first) was to call the daughter, from my phone, and get her permission that way. It turns out that that could be perceived (by Medicare) as solicitation and was therefore declared a non-viable option. I didn’t want to lose the sale, so I presented my idea! Our conversation unfolded as follows:

Me: “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to call your daughter, from your phone and have her give her permission for me to complete this enrollment with you, on her behalf.”

Caller: “Okay. Wait, I can’t make 3-way calls from my phone.”

“Ha. I don’t mean to sound ‘pushy’ but most phones ‘these days’ are able to 3-way call.”

“Oh really? How do I do it?”

“Press the Talk/Send button, call your daughter and wait for the call to connect. That should put me on hold and allow you to conference all 3 of us by pushing the Talk/Send button again.”

“Okay, so push Talk, call my daughter, and push Talk again and we’ll be talking to you. Okay. Let me try this. Wait, what’s your number in case this doesn’t work.”

…I proceeded to break a few rules and gave her my phone number and extension…

Caller: “Okay. Here goes nothing. Hold on and I’ll get her.”

You can probably guess how this ended – the 3-way call worked, I recorded the daughter’s permission to speak to her mother, on her behalf and completed a telephonic enrollment; go me. :)