I havent been writing here for a long time…. too long time, but I had to have a look at my goals, and prioritize my workload! I spent way too many hours on my professional work, I bought another domain www.4timersarbejdsuge.dk (a Danish 4hour work week forum). And spent alot of time setting that one up, then I had kasperlife.com where I also had to redefine some issues, as I think it can easily get a bit confusing. I was going out on social experimenting 2 times a week with my friend Thomas, Training Boxing 3 times a week, training Australian Rules Football 2 times a week, and playing a game once a week, going out for drinks or eating with my girl a couple of times a week (which was way too little so we just broke up! :(). So, as you see I just did not have the time as I was also fixing my jobsite www.rankajob.com and doing work on my friends facebook dating site www.facebookdater.com! Wow, that looks crazy when I put it into writing :D! So… just to make it even more loony, I chose to start a coaching course with coachcamp.dk which I will be starting on in medio May!

Ok… so I have to cut it down a bit! Prioritize, and so on! I have quite a bit of work to do, as I have a deal with Coachcamp! I have to get this guy indexed on some danish keywords for getting a rebate…if not Ill have to pay the full prize of the course which is around 10.000 USD!

So, that is why Iam not writing a lot of articles on KasperLife at the moment!

OK… need to go back to work

I have been looking for a group to work with personal growth, and found none! Therefore I have made a forum here on kasperlife for finding self help groups! The idea is to post a thread with the name of the city or area you life in and then people from all over will be able to find self growht groups in that area!

The forum can be found here: Personal Growth Groups

I have spent the last couple of days wondering how i can prioritize my goals… as I mentioned in my earlier articles, I feel that I have too many goals, and need to prioritize them! I went to Stockholm this weekend, and had a wonderful time with a good friend of mine.. Just to relax and defragment my mind! We ate at fancy restaurants, and had cool drinks at nice cocktail lounges at SturePlan in central Stockholm! The weather was beautiful and we really got to chill out. But in the back of my mind I felt the stress caused by the “too many goals issue”. On the way back, I was browsing through an FHM magazine… I do not particularly like those kinds of magazines, as they are all pictures and no text… nothing that can actually inspire you except from cars you cannot afford, and cool watches! What they did have though, was a “HOT or NOT” scheme about fashion or tv series or whatever! even though I did not pay attention to what it was about, I noticed that this scheme was what I needed! I am going to make a “HOT OR NOT” of my goals… Ill just put in some other factors, namely URGENCY and IMPORTANCE!

When I have my goals visualized it is much easier to control them! If the goal is not that important but urgent, I will see if I can get it done fast, if it is important but not urgent, it can wait a little… every week the schedule will move one click to the left, and all the goals will get a bit more urgent! If you think this is interesting I have made an Excel ready for you to download here: PRIORITIZE GOALS Just download it and plot in your goals… it will help you get a better vision of your goals, and how you prioritize!

My next step is to make a PAL list inspired by the sales departments of large companies. A PAL is short for Potential Accounts List! The list is made up by large and interesting accounts that the company would want/like as clients. This helps me in ONE major area… Because a PAL can only have a certain number of accounts! So, if they put in a new account, another one has to go. So, Iam going to use this for my goals. I will make a list of all the goals I would want to acchieve! But only 10 can make it at the time to my  PGL = Priority Goal List! When one is acchieved, a new one can enter from my goal list… if I would want to put another goal on my PGL, another one has to go! This way my PGL is always high priority goals!

Let me know if you can use these tools, and if you think there is anything we can change a bit, to optimize it!

/Kas

CRISIS!!!! What can I do?

I have reached a bit of a crisis in my personal development journey. Yesterday I had a long talk with my wing man on this journey, and had the idea that I might be trying to reach too many goals at one time! Currently I have goals within Personal Finances, which are going ok, Social Dynamics, which are kind of stagnated, Time Management which I am not really following up on 100%, sports, which is going really well (I was awarded “best on ground” at my first Aussie rules football match this year, last saturday) and on top of that I am constantly finding other areas that I would like to improve on! I know from earlier that it is an issue that I am not focused on a few things at the time! It really gives me a head ache thinking about these things all the time, and I think I need to rethink the whole thing… take a break, and defragment my mind a little. My motivation has suddently plummeted. And this is the wrong time of year for this…. summer is comming, I should be totally motivated and focused.

One of the biggest issues is actually TIME… I dont feel that i have time for my friends at the moment! I train boxing monday, wednesday and friday, football tuesday and thursday, match saturday, social experiments/ dynamics wednesday and friday, I need to see my family more often, hang out with my friends, go to work, work on facebookdater and rankajob (my two new private projects) and…. STOP!!!

I dont have a clue what to do other than sit down and REALLY go through my goals! So, Iam going to go to Stockholm for the weekend and relax a bit… do nothing, eat out, sleep in and so on for three days. Then I want to find just a few goals that I want to follow up on and stay focused on those, till I reached my goals.

Yesterday I went to the Depak Chopra speech in Copenhagen! I never heard about him before, I must admit! But my friend Thomas was inviting, so I had to go…. And it blew my mind! Even though this stuff might be a bit technical. Especially when he started explaining that we are the universe and the universe is in us… I was already getting in my defence state! Crossed arms, and mimicking a 5 year old! But then something caught my attention…. This guy could actually explain those things, and not only explain it, he almost managed to keep me awake for 3 hours… but that is another thing… it actually surprised me that he was not just any “new” Motivational Guru, with an “emperors new clothes” theory. He took some of the theories from his buddhist background and matched them up with western civilizations/ christianity’s morales. Further to that when we really got into things (of course some of it got too “hippieyaya”!) he took some buddhist sayings and compared them to sayings of Jesus! (I am an atheist, but always found religion interesting).

But that was not my HUGE EYEOPENER! That was actually in the end of his speech, when he was talking about 15 values, a person should or could have (sorry, Im not sure what he actually said here, but he probably did not say that we should have those ;)!) I heard versions of that before somewhere! But where? Then it struck me… It is ancient coaching/nlp/motivational stuff…. WOW… I loved it… got out my notebook, and got to write down a few of them.. hopefully we can have a fruitful discussion of those. Here they are (the ones i got!):

You and I evoke the Universe by looking at it!

Conciousness is found in the space between thoughts (I made that one up… think it is catchy… I might try and sell it to Eckhart Tolle ;))

“Socially Programmed hallucinations”

That person or thing is in me as I am in it!

Yoga (Yoke) means connecting to the source (did not know that there was a word “yoke” for that same thing in english!)

All fulfillment comes from within - Ask and you shall find (Jesus) which is connected to modern coaching where you “ask the right questions (in the positive) and you will get the right (positive) answers! - Fundamental questions gives fundamental answers!

Seperate self

“To get rid of the ego is the ultimate melodrama of the ego” I love this one… had the discussion last saturday when I was at the goal setting and managing course! Some girls were discussing this, and I thought it was bullsh*t! You cannot give up your ego, 100%!

What you can do in relation to your ego is the following: Just watch what is happening an then watch the observer’s reaction…. and dont judge!

highest level of intelligence is observing your self with our judging!

The world is a mirror of the self (smile to the world and the world smiles back)  We do not like people with traits that we deny our selves!

try as a test to identify traits of people you do not like and see if you can recognise them in your self… maybe ask some people that are close to you! Then if they are in you, try to accept those traits!

Resist no Evil - We heard that one before, but in buddhism there is no good, without evil… everybody has a shadow, unless they are standing in the dark! Yin Yang… Evil is not Evil!

Death makes life possible! - Every day you die…. and comes back in a different and better version! Your skin regenerates every month! A cancercell is a healthy cell that forgot how to die! So, Let the past die! Find out what you need to let die in you, to come back in a better version! Death is a creative process!

We are the universe - the light from the universe shines on a plant which transforms the energy into leaves which we eat, which makes us grow… thereby we are the universe and the univers is in us! We are a tree, without us the tree would not breathe (carbondioxide) and we would not breathe without the tree (Oxygen).

the only time is NOW!

the above is only my keywords from the Depak Chopra speech.. I will have them as discussions in future posts, where I hope to get in depth with those!

Namaste

Kasper

I have been looking around on a lot of forums for new bloggers, and it seems there are alot of new bloggers that get stuck because they dont get any readers or traffic to the blog. Therefore Ill write you my personal favorite tips for getting more traffic to your blog. I dont want to get all SEO consultant on you guys, I just want to get you to have a better understanding of what happens with the search engines. Oh, I should say that right away… I depend mostly on Search engines for my traffic (Google only actually).

Three Simple Steps To more Blog Traffic

First Optimisation Step: Benchmarking

Get a counter on your site… This is your benchmarking tool, primarely. But further to that, a good counter like googles "Analytics" will also provide you with a lot of great info on who your visitors are, and what really works on your site, and what does not! So, I have used motigo, which is really good if you want real time stats, as well as google urls on the specific search someone did to find your site. The bad thing about Motigo, is that everybody can see your stats. If you dont want that, stay with analytics. And yes, then there is analytics, which I would definately recommend. With Wordpress blogs, you can find a plug in where you only have to put in your analytics code, and then you are on your way. probably there is an easy solution to Blogspot as well, even though I dont know that one really well.

Second Optimization Step: Relevance!

Write Great Content… Google bots are living off eating your content. If you dont have content, the bot will starve, and wont visit your site much. Neither will your visitors! The more articles and posts on your blog, the more different things your site will be relevant towards. VERY basically, Google decides your position from two things; relevance and popularity! With a lot of content, your site will be relevant to alot of different things.

Third Optimisation Step: Popularity!

If you want to be able to see how popular google finds your site, get a google toolbar with PageRank button. There is a lot of discussion between SEO people about the relevance of PageRank, but I personally think that all SEO guys dont really know, and just wants to open their mouths about something… My opinion about PageRank is… It is better than nothing! PageRank is updated every 3rd or 4th month, and is therefore not always the best current picture of how popular your site is. Even though it says your PageRank is 0 it might actually be 4! Ok, no more babbling about PageRank. We are basically talking about Popularity. The more popular your site is the bigger is your chance to get a proper ranking on google. So, two sites with the same relevance for Personal Development, but one has much higher popularity, that with the highest popularity will get the best ranking (also known as SERPs to seo folk). Ok, so how does Google determine how popular your site is? Easy, it looks at how many other sites link to yours… the more popular the other sites are, the more their meaning weigh! So, after getting your Counter, and starting writing great content (relevance), you got to start getting links (popularity). Start by asking your friends, then maybe list your site at some directories (not the best solution anymore) and start up like that… get the snowball rolling. The more visitors you get, the bigger chance people will start linking to your site.

One easy way to get a link to your site:

Link to www.kasperlife.com and let me know when your link is up, and where it is… then Ill put a link to your site, from one of my blogs! voila, now you have your first ingoing link, and your blog is on its way to be the huge success you want it to be! (Link text should be "Personal Growth Blog" or "Self Help Blog").

The whole point about this article is not to get into nerdy details about optimising your website, but an easy way of getting your blogs traffic numbers up, quickly and easy. If you focus on these three steps, you will get tons of traffic really quickly.

Please comment on this article, I am really curious if it helps you!

Rgrds

Kasper

Hi everybody, sorry it has been a while, I have been flat out busy!

Saturday I went to a really interesting workshop lead by the just 21 year old Marlene Hörfarter. She is incredible… very inspiring for that young a girl!

The workshop was named something like “Take Life Into Your Own Hands!”, and gave me a really good point towards my personal change journey. The very fundamentals of such change is working on your goals. I say “working on” because you need to really define your goals. I have been a bit naive towards this the whole time. I have had hundreds of not very defined goals, one day working towards one, the other day working towards another. I have totally changed my head around these things. From now on I will work on ONE goal at the time, when I cannot work towards that goal anymore, I will start on the other. I have been thinking a bit about my goal of getting out of debt. This is a goal, that Iam working on, but I cannot do much more than I do now (well I could, but i have prioritized other things) So, I take out an amount of cash every sunday. This is all the money I spend one week at the time. My point is that this goal, I will be working on for a while, but I can work on other things meanwhile. I guess you could say that Iam latently working on this goal, which makes room for other goals, to be worked on!

So, the very first thing to do, is write down your goals… all of them… spend a couple of hours, writing down your goals, dont be too specific, just write it down, and throw out the ones you find irrelevant in the process. After a couple of hours, you have your goals, and you are ready to start working on those. the next thing we did, was working on our values. What are your values in life?

Make a list of 10 values… spend some time creating those! after doing this, you sort out 3 of the less important ones, then another 2 and another 2. You are now down to 3 values, that should define you the most. The real question here is this: “Do your values correspond with your goals?” think about it for a minute… In coaching often we are talking about goals, as ”end-goals” and ”means-to-an-end-goals”. End goals often correspond to your values, while means-to-an-end-goals are often goals, that actually hides another goal! Ill give you an example: Us guys are often talking about wanting a new cool car. This is almost never an “end-goal” but a means to an end. Because when we want this cool new car, we want that because of what it can give us; respect, status, chicks…. so… what we REALLY want is respect, status and chicks… often those are also means to an end goals, so you could ask the question; why do you want respect, status, and chicks…. It could be that you are depending on external sources of acceptance, and a REAL “End-Goal” could be that you want to be able to rely on your self for a feeling of acceptance. So, if your real goal is “An Internal Source of Acceptance”, how do you work towards this?

To be continued…

Imagine a scenario, where you achieve ALL your dreams… then imagine another scenario where you achieve, say, a great part of your dreams… I have had a problem, always chasing a dream, then halfway there, I see another thing I would like to achieve, and then I start chasing that dream, or thing in my life. So, it is obvious that I need some structure on my dream chasing! As Kung Futze said:”A man chasing two rabbits, catches none!”. So, as I have felt that exact saying on myself quite a bit lately, I have decided to find a solution. Finding out what dreams I want to chase right now, which ones should be put off till later, and which ones to focus on right now!

So, I am going to make a list of Goals, I NEED to achieve in my life. Just jot up anything that comes to mind, I am not going to do that here, but will wait till I get home, and can sit quietly and do it. I have some of those dreams jotted down in my moleskin already. But how do I find out which dreams are more important than others, and how can I arrange those in groups?

When prioritizing my goals, I will put them into categories, after priority, hereby identifying which ones are more important and which ones to get started on first. The most important Goals/ Actions in my life i am going to name “BIG ROCKS”, those are the ones that are REALLY meaningful (to me). Then the lower priorities are going to be named SMALL ROCKS, SAND and (maybe WATER). The reason for those metaphors are the story about the old man and the big rocks…(I am going to replicate this as good as I can… (This story may vary, but you probably heard it quite a few times, if you have been going to a lot of weddings ;))

”

A wise old man once wanted to teach his disciples an important learning. He emptied a bag full of rocks onto the ground in front of him. He then took all those rocks and put them into a container placed in front of him. The container was filled to the edge with the rocks, and the wise man asked his disciples:” Is this container full now?”

All the disciples nodded their heads eagerly, excited about what the old man’s point might be. But then the wise man took another bag, and emptied the content of smaller rocks, into the container. The small rocks fell in between all the larger rocks. He let the small rocks settle and looked at his disciples with a smile on his lip. Then he asked:” Is the container full NOW?”

All the disciples laughed and nodded their heads, “Yes NOW the container was full!” But then the wise man took another bag, and poured sand in between the large and smaller rocks. Then, after all the sand had settled between the rocks and stones, he asked again:”is the container filled now?”

His disciples was laughing out loud, and yelled;” Yes, the container IS filled now, and we DID get the point!”. Oh, did you?” the wise man said, as he poured water into the container…

”

This story is about many things, but the most important to me is the symbolism of big rocks, stones, sand and water.

The big rocks are the large important things in life, the stones are smaller but still important things. the sand is smaller issues in life, but also an important stabilizer for the rocks and stones. In the end the water is further assisting the sand to settle, and is therefore important to sand, stones and rocks.

If you want to see my Goals, Objectives and Procedures CLICK HERE!

By identifying the BIG and often Dificult actions I have to get done, to reach my full potential in life, I have sorted those, and made a very simple version of Steven WORKSHEET from “7 habits of the highly effective people” and made an overview on what goals to work with every day and week. with a very clear vision on what goals, and how to get there, I believe I will be able to reach my Goals faster!

See my WORKSHEETS CLICK HERE!

Just a quick update on what I have been doing the last couple of days! Right now Im on the couch with my duvee, relaxing! Had a really great weekend. Hung out with good friends, met some cool people, and I expect to go out and meet with a cool friend of mine in a couple of hours. But back to my Great weekend…

My friend Mats and me went boxing friday afternoon. We actually did about 10 training rounds in the ring (notice the black eye on Mats and the scatches on our faces :))… thought I was going to puke like three times. But wow, did I learn alot! After a great exercise, we went home. We had a living Lobster in the fridge, a bit net of Muscles and a bunch of Norwegian lobsters (you know, the small juicy ones). So, we uncorked a bottle of Silverlake Sauvignon Blanc and started cooking. There is nothing like cooking with friends, especially I love it when you have some really great quality raw materials to work with! Eating seafood with your fingers, having chilli, garlic, and onion all over your hands and fingers, is really sexy… too bad we did not invite any girls, but now I know what I will do when I bring a date at home for dinner in the near future for sure, cutlery is going to be out of the question

After that a few drinks, in a bar around the corner, with even more friends! Relaxed, perfect…

Yesterday, I went with the same friend to a Spa, and had a chilled afternoon. First we scrubbed our whole bodies, with salt and wood. With a bit of hangovers, we started off going to the steambath, and stretched out our sore muscles, after that frying in the sauna for a while. Then we had some food, and a beer (what is beer doing in a wellness center?) after that I went to a waterbed with heating lamps… I have no clue whatever what they where supposed to do, but I fell a sleep, and woke up half an hour later! Then a quick solarium and then home another nap, and a movie! Then off to meet my inspirational self help partner Thomas in town for a cup of coffee! Had a hard time pushing my limits on approaching people, but eventually, we really got to meet some cool people! That is what the whole exercise is about, pushing our comfort zone! It is really hard at times, but amazingly awarding. Thomas had taken some time for himself in a house on a small island, to clear his head. He was on fire yesterday. He just seemed to be able to lock in really quickly, and get some great responses from people! One of the hottest girls in the bar, was all over him, constantly touching him, whispering in his ears and all those Indicators of Interest. That is what Social Dynamics is all about. Cool Thomas, you really have grown. Hope I can get you to write about your Social Growth Journey in here!

This morning I went to eat breakfast with a friend of mine from Barcelona, who is staying at a fancy hotel near from here…. He has free breakfast, so he invited me ;)! So, I had a great weekend, and now my sister is back from her skiing vacation with her boyfriend, so hopefully I get to see her this evening, and hear about their trip! My brother in law, did some talking about going to a big car show that is on this weekend, so if we go, I think I can say that I had a weekend full of adventure, cool experiences, and plenty of relaxation!

/Kasper

A few weeks ago, I had a terrible chest pain, I tried to get over it my self, but it didnt help. It ended up with me going to the hospital, and they actually admitted me to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I was pretty sure that nothing was wrong with my heart, and that it had to be a mistake. But what I noticed as I was in the hospital for a few days was that the people in here where very motivated to change their lifestyle. "Of course!" you might say, but this is actually VERY related to the whole Anthonny Robbins "Decision Making”. The most important thing in Personal development has nothing to do with wishing to change your life, or reading a bunch of material by the great personal growth gurus…. It has to do with your MOTIVATION!

Many times when I was new in this, I did read all the books I could come across on NLP, Personal Growth, How to get rich in 5 days and How to get your dream girl. That is all theory… If you read a book on skiing, will you know how to ski? One thing is theory and another thing is Practical application. But if you are not MOTIVATED how will you get to apply the theory on your self? It has to do with your MOTIVATION!

Back to the hospital… Imagine being hospitalized with a heart decease! Often those are closely related to a fat diet, low physical activity, smoking and maybe a lot of other things. What I noticed in the hospital was that all these obese people, where standing in line to the fruit basket. Some of these people had never before eaten a piece of fruit (really… never!!!). So, my dear reader, can you tell me what the reason for this sudden personal change is? Yes, you are absolutely right my friend… IT has to do with their MOTIVATION! These people are ofcourse very motivated to change their lives. They KNOW for sure, that if they don’t, they will (if lucky) be hospitalized in a short while again. If not hospitalized, they will be in the cemetery! ISNT THAT MOTIVATION?

If you are not going to the hospital, or have another direct MOTIVATION impact, you can look into NLP. For motivating people NLP is a great tool. Actually, in NLP there is something called a NLP LIFELINE. This lifeline first takes you through your future life if you DO NOT change… in ½ a year, 1 year 2 years and so on. This will give you a feeling of urgency to change… or “MOTIVATION” to change. Then we do the same, but this time you imagine your life if you do change! This might or might not motivate you to change, but no matter what I believe that you will feel a little more motivated after such a session. After that you will come to see that to change your life in a more positive way, it all has to do with your MOTIVATION!

I have made a NLP LIFELINE walk through HERE!