There’s nothing like success to make you a loser magnet. A friend of mine recently won a pretty prestigious writing award. He was excited, but then a week or two later when we were talking he was feeling kind of bummed out. He was shocked at the amount of criticism and pettiness and envy he was getting about his win. I reassured him that the negative reactions were a sure sign he was a success. Nobody hates you unless they see you as a competitive threat. Being attacked for standing …

There’s a difference between a critic and someone just being critical - a troll for instance. I love critics. I hate trolls. No, I feel sorry for trolls. They’re so miserable and self-loathing they can’t live with themselves so they go out in search of happy people to steal their joy and potential.
Critics we learn from, their intent is to point out things we’re doing that, if in their opinion we were to change - we might do what we’re doing even better. Trolls just drop their pants, squat …

Why not hay? While the government is rushing to dump toxic chemicals into the ocean to clean up the oil spill, no one is considering the impact on the water or a much cheaper and better solution - hay. Watch this video and see for yourself:

This is a first for me. I’m part of a workshop called the “World Changing Writing Workshop.” Two very impressive people I’ve known from Seth Godin’s social network “Triiibes.com” have put this together and included me as one of their speakers. I talk about how to write about “Hot button Issues,” the hot button in my case being homelessness. I join an amazing list of writers who also give tips and info on writing that changes the world. People like Chris Guillebeau, Jonathan Fields, Danielle LaPorte, Colleen Wainwright, Jennifer Louden …

I called a friend of mine over the weekend to see if she wanted to have lunch this week. I waited until after dinner because I know weekends are their time for the kids. They usually eat dinner, watch a movie, put the kids to bed and then each of them head off to their respective computers about 8 or 8:30 to answer email and whatever before heading to bed around 10 p.m. I know this because that has been their routine for more than three years.
When she answered she …