Beware of False Evidence Appearing Real

The other day, I went into the chicken coop to gather eggs. I still have some fake eggs in there from when the hens were babies learning where they should deposit their precious gold-filled jewels. Even though the hens know exactly where to lay eggs, some of them evidently like to feel as if they’re really accomplishing something, because they have moved a number of the fakes into the nests.

The plastic eggs are quite realistic. They’re a little rough, so they don’t seem like plastic. They’re light brown, just like most of the eggs from my brown-laying ladies, and they’re about the size you’d expect any egg to be. But they’re hollow and insubstantial in heft.

So when I approached the nest in the hay bail, the hen whom I call Brrr because of the growly noise she makes told me she had her fortune beneath her and she did not want to give it up. She’s actually a sweet hen but makes a lot of noise when you go for her stash. Laughing, I lifted Brrr off her hoard and discovered she did indeed have a whole pile of eggs.

If you look at them, they all appear to be real. And when a hen has been sitting over them, they’re all toasty warm. So they all feel the same at first touch.

So in order to take only the nourishing eggs home, I have to handle each egg a little to sort the real from the fake. As I went through this sorting exercise, I thought how much it reminded me of doing business online.

See, there are a lot of gurus who appear to have nourishing information. They package it in a way that makes it appear valuable. It’s the right kind of stuff, and it seems appealing. It looks like exactly what you need

As a matter of fact,some people hoard all this information as if it is all a treasure beyond measure, just as Brrr does. It is only when you take the time to study the items that you realize some are heavy, nourishing and true, while others are hollow and misleading.

I know I’ve run into a number of fake eggs in my entrepreneurial journey. I even used to work with one of them. Perhaps you’ve encountered some misleading information along the way as well.

So whenever you encounter someone who appears to have valuable resources that will nourish and strengthen you, be sure to interact with that egg to discern whether or not it’s true!

***

What you’ve just experienced is an example of storytelling for business in which I used an everyday occurrence…well, for ME it’s an everyday occurrence…and used it to show you an important teaching  in an unusual and memorable way.

Perhaps you’ll remember the story of the plastic eggs next time you encounter what appears at first glance to be nutritious, healthy resources. And I’m sure that like me, you’ll pick up a fake once or twice and only realize when it’s in your hand how useless it truly is.

Where does storytelling come in to your business? Everywhere! You will tell stories in blog posts, articles, teleseminars, webinars, live events, inside your book, inside your product, in coaching calls, in consultations, in emails…everywhere!

Storytelling for business belongs in all your communications, including articles.

One of the world’s most well-known article marketers, whose own articles can be found on top websites like About.com, Home Business Magazine, Site Pro News, MarketingProfs,MediaPost and thousand more invited me to be a guest expert in his new article writing live-by-phone workshop event starting this week.

I am really excited, because article marketing expert Eric Gruber has grown his whole business around articles, and his approach to article marketing is heart-centered and relationship building. I’ve personally met him at some live events and am truly impressed. He makes writing good articles easy.

I’m so impressed with his system that I am promoting it from inside the pages of The Instant VIP book, which teaches experts how to write a book that prospers your business.

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Yes, this is all possible – if you follow Eric’s article writing
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Yes I’m an affiliate as well as faculty, and I KNOW Eric will provide enormous value to you throughout the workshop. Otherwise, I would not be involved. I care so much about you and your success. I will steer you right.

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I will be sharing the power of storytelling for personal and business development Thursday, March 4 on Missing Power Radio, and I invite you to listen.

Here is the show description:

Discover the missing power you can not find in your life. It may be balance in life, finding new sources of income, dreaming as a kid once again, learn to read to grow !! !! .

Join us live via phone or computer.

Jacob sat in his chair quietly next to his mom and dad as his grade 3 teacher Mrs. Carter gave them an update on his progress at school.

“Jacob is what we call a slow learner” said Mrs. Carter quietly.

Jacob held his breath and sank a little lower into his chair. He looked up at his dad to see if he was in trouble. His father glanced down, smiled and gave him a quick wink.

In the car on the way home from the Parent-Teacher night, Jacob thought about what Mrs. Carter had called him – ‘Slow Learner’. Deep down Jacob knew that what she really meant was that he was dumb.

Later that evening, Jacob’s dad came into his room carrying a piece of paper and a pen.

He sat down on the side of the bed and said, “Hey Jake, I wanted to talk to you about what Mrs. Carter said today.”

Jacob thought he might still be in trouble for being a slow learner so he didn’t say anything.

“Mrs. Carter called you something today Jake, do you know what it was?”

“A Slow Learner” replied Jake who had already taken the words to heart.

“That’s right” said his dad as he wrote the words ‘Slow Learner’ on the piece of paper.

“Do you know what this says?”

“Slow Learner” replied Jacob nodding sadly.

Jacob’s dad then held up the piece of paper in front of his son and purposefully tore it into two.

Jacob’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Mrs. Carter was wrong Jake” said Jacob’s dad as he continued to tear the paper into smaller and smaller pieces.

“You’re not a slow learner.”

“I’m not?”

“No, and starting tomorrow, you and I are going to show that Mrs. Carter she was wrong, OK?”

“OK” Jacob hugged his dad, snuggled down into his pillow and fell asleep with a smile on his face and a warm glow in his heart.

From that day on, Jacob’s dad spent one hour per day helping Jacob with his reading and writing. By the end of the year, Jacob was doing much better at school and interestingly no-one ever labeled him a ‘Slow Learner’ again.

Jacob’s dad knew that when a child receives a label from a person in authority such as a teacher or parent, they often take that label to heart and it becomes a part of their self identity for the rest of their lives.

To avoid this from happening to his son, Jacob’s dad created a tangible representation of the ‘Slow Learner’ label and tore it up it in front of Jacob so that the label would not become a part of his child’s self concept.

Today I’d like to invite you to do the same exercise. To begin, find a quiet spot where you won’t be disturbed and think about the labels that people have given to you in the past.

Perhaps you were given a label by one of your parents, your teacher or your spouse. What is the label that resonates in your mind? Is there a label that has become part of your self identity because it was given to you by a person in a position of authority?

If so, write this label down on a blank sheet of paper and hold it up to see it for what it really is – A Label.

It is a label – nothing more. It is not part of you and you do not have to accept it as part of your self identity any longer.

As you begin to see the label for what it really is – Rip it in half and enjoy the feeling of destroying the label once and for all.

When you do this exercise you will feel a surge of motivation to take action to ensure that no one attempts to give you this label again in the future.

Just as Jacob’s dad took action and helped his son with his school work, make sure you follow through and do whatever you need to do to eliminate the remnants of the label from your life forever.

Until next time,
Dare To Dream
Anthony

The first thing I thought when I heard the news was, “Awesome! Now everyone can put BuddyPress on their site if they want it.” The second thought I had was, “Shoot! Average WordPress users won’t want to try BuddyPress if they have to switch their site themes over to the BuddyPress default theme just to try it out.” The third thought I had was, “That can’t be right. I’ll ask Andy.”

As it turned out, you could keep your current theme with BuddyPress if you added a couple of files and made a few file edits. There was even a link on the BuddyPress site to download the necessary files. That still seemed a little clunky, though, so Andy, super awesome guy that he is, went ahead and made a plugin to get you started. The BuddyPress Template Pack can be installed directly from your WordPress admin (Plugins > Add New), and will walk you through the theme additions step by step.*

Now you can use BuddyPress with your single site installation of WordPress, and you can keep your existing theme. Seriously, could BuddyPress have made it any easier for you to add social networking to your site? I know I can’t wait to try it out this weekend, how about you?

* Don’t forget to install BuddyPress itself, or the template pack plugin won’t do anything!

ThePeaceSeed.com This is the powerful cover of The Peace Seed: Personal and Global Transformation through Storytelling by Ronda Del Boccio. This is a messenger mini-book that guides you along a journey of discovery. Cover design by Robert Evans of the Messenger Network.

Menus

There’s been a flurry of blog posts about the integration of the WooThemes Custom Navigation into WordPress core, so I thought it was time we posted the official word. For 3.0, the main user-facing feature we wanted to include was a better site menu management system. Currently, dealing with menus is clunky, using Page IDs or in some cases categories, if a theme uses categories instead of pages for the menu. We wanted a menu system that had the drag and drop ease of the widget management screen, could combine Pages, Categories, and Links, was able to be re-ordered, allowed submenus, and enabled hiding specific Pages or Categories from the menu altogether. We were in the process of building this when WooThemes introduced their Custom Navigation system. Watching their introductory video, it seemed that their system did pretty much everything we wanted to do for core, so we reached out to them about contributing to core.

As you’ve probably heard, it worked out, and the first patch has been submitted. It does require some code modification, which is happening now. The decision to incorporate the Woo menus happened right before our planned feature freeze for the 3.0 development cycle, so we pushed our freeze date back by two weeks to allow the addition. We’re now targeting the 3.0 release for early May, and we think it will be worth the extra two-week wait.

I’m personally really happy that it worked out this way, because I think it will show commercial theme and plugin authors that contributing to core is a win-win proposition. More people can contribute to and improve the basic functional code now, while WooThemes can continue to innovate on top of it for their customers. They get massive bragging rights (which I have no doubt will lead to even more customers), core gets a nice menu system without having to reinvent the wheel, and WordPress users all over the world will benefit. I’m hoping other plugin and theme developers will take a cue from Woo and look at core as a place for collaboration, rather than competition.

The Merge

It was announced at WordCamp San Francisco last year that WordPress and WordPress MU would be merging codebases. This has now happened in 3.0-alpha, and we’re working on smashing bugs and tidying up a few screens. If you’re currently using a single install of WordPress, when you upgrade to 3.0 you won’t see any of the extra screens associated with running a network of sites. If you’re currently running MU, when you upgrade you’ll notice a few labels changing, but upgrading should be as painless as usual. If you’re going to set up a new WordPress installation, you’ll be asked as part of the setup if you want one site or multiple sites, so that’s pretty simple. If you want to turn your single install into one that supports multiple sites, we’ll have a tool for you to use to do that, too. So if you’ve been worried about the merge, have a cup of chamomile tea and relax; it will all be fine.

Patch Sprint!

Okay, so where are we now? The new feature freeze date is on Monday, March 1, 2010. That means that after that date, no more enhancements or features will be added, and we’ll switch gears to focus solely on crushing bugs and fixing up the features that have already made it in. That means we only have a week to try and finish up the many Trac tickets on the 3.0 milestone that either need a patch or have a patch that needs testing. You can help! From now until noon eastern time on March 1 (that’s 17:00 UTC on March 1), head on over to Trac and pitch in. If you hit a wall, hop into the core development channel at #wordpress-dev on irc.freenode.net and hopefully one of the friendly core contributors can give you a push.