LOVE this quote and how true it is! #quotes #life
— Sig Nordal, Jr (@signordal) April 11, 2017
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Handel’s Messiah was first performed 275 years ago this week, the April 13, 1742 premiere taking place in Dublin’s New Music Hall before a distinguished and appreciative audience — though perhaps a crowded one, as the 700 ladies and gentlemen attending were asked, as a space-saving measure, to leave their hoop skirts and swords at home. For one rapt reviewer, the combination of Handel’s music with the biblical text compiled by Charles Jennens was a marriage made in heaven: “The Sublime, the Grand, and the Tender adapted to the most elevated, majestic, and moving words conspired to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear.”
Sublimity was an issue, given that the Messiah premiered on Easter weekend. Originally scheduled for April 12th, the premiere had been delayed a day by “persons of Distinction.” Possibly those persons preferred April 13th because it was Good Friday; possibly they had to do a little more arm-twisting on Dean Jonathan Swift of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Asked to permit members of his choir to participate in the Messiah, Swift had initially refused on the grounds that the music hall, situated among the shops and pubs of central Dublin, was but “a club of fiddlers in Fishamble Street.”
In George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends, Ellen T. Harris notes that the composer’s unrivaled popularity in England, his home from 1712 until his death in 1759, was based on his ability to bridge the sacred and the secular:
In London, the sound of his music reached from court to theater, from cathedral to tavern, and was performed by the greatest virtuosi of the era as well as the lonely spinster sitting at her keyboard. It served not just at coronations but as a background to daily life . . . In 1732, the first public performance of Handel’s Esther occurred at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, and from 1739, his biblical oratorios in English, commencing with Saul and Israel in Egypt, began to represent, even in some ways to create, the national Protestant identity in Great Britain.
As elsewhere in the West, Britain’s religious identity is now more diverse than in Handel’s day. The religious scholar Diana Butler Bass is not among those who lament the diversity and what has evolved from it. Her recent Grounded: Finding God in the World — A Spiritual Revolution pursues the argument introduced in her earlier Christianity after Religion — the idea that a world “spiritual but not religious” is preferable to a religious world that is highly sectarian. Turning our attention away from the decline of organized religion in the West and the rise of fundamentalist belief elsewhere, Bass notes that a shift in religious consciousness has brought “a reenchantment of the world, a spiritual revolution”:
We no longer live isolated behind boundaries of ethnicity, race, or religion. We are connected in global community. We search the Internet for answers; we ask our Buddhist or Hindu neighbors; we read our own sacred texts and the texts of others; we listen to preachers from the world’s religions. Answers are no longer confined to the opinions of a local priest, mullah, rabbi, or guru. The answers depend on us figuring this out together.
In Grounded, Bass happily exchanges “top-down religions” for “a rebirthing of faith from the ground up.” In Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People, Nadia Bolz-Weber takes us along on her spiritual road trip — a bumpy, many-detoured, and funny ride in search of, or hoping to inspire, ground-up faith. Bolz-Weber says that it is a trip that she and her congregation at House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado take daily:
We see a need, we fill it. We fuck up, we say sorry. We ask for grace and prayers when we need them (a lot). Jesus shows up for us through each other. We eat, we pray, we sing, we fall, we get up, repeat. Not that complicated.
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Chicago – Illinois – USA (by Anh Dinh)
Have you ever wished you had a super power? Something that can make you special or better than everyone else?
Of course, almost everyone wishes, in one way or another, to have some secret potential to unlock. Well, what if I told you that all your superhero dreams of unlimited power, potential, and unmatched skills are completely attainable?
Now, you might probably be thinking that this is another cheesy scam. Well, it’s not. I’m not trying to sell anything either.
I am trying to tell you the simple yet spectacular secret to success: mental toughness.
You may have probably heard of this before many times, but let me give you a new perspective. There are two kinds of talent in this world: talent you are born with and talent you develop.
Think of Mozart, Einstein, and Stephen Hawking. These are examples of people born with an amazing talent or just pure genius.
How could anyone ever be like them? Especially you and me, right?
This is where mental toughness comes in.
You see, we all know that if we want something, all we need to do is work hard to obtain it. Easier said than done, but it makes sense. The problem with doing this is the universal law: nothing is free. Ever.
We might be willing to give up some time and hard work to achieve a goal, but to truly achieve that goal, we need to understand what it is going to cost. This is mental toughness. It’s not just mentally pushing yourself to endure through the hard times, but it is knowing what you are willing to give up, the challenges, and rewards.
Let me give you an example. I love to run. I run quite often and have even done races and triathlons. A friend of mine coaxed me into training for a 50-mile race…50 MILES!!!
For some reason, I agreed (probably because I’m an idiot) and have been training for this demon of a race for several months. But, I ran into a problem.
You see, training so hard for so long tends to take its toll on the body, especially the tendons, ligaments, and joints. I have developed a pretty bad case of runner’s knee (if you are a runner you will understand), and have put a lot of thought toward what I am going to do about this 50 miler.
Should I keep training and risk further injury? Or should I quit? Well, if I am truly mentally tough, I will push through and suck it up, right? Wrong.
Being mentally tough does not mean being an idiot. Being mentally tough means you see all your options and do the math. For example, with that situation, I can look at the problem as if there are only two perspectives: injure myself or quit.
I can consider what needs to be done to continue and if it is worth it. Could I run this race with my injury and still complete it? Yes. It would hurt like hell and maybe give me a permanent injury, but, yes, I could do it. But, do I want to take that risk? No, I don’t.
So how can I achieve my goal without so much risk and pain? I can treat the injury, let myself heal and then resume training. Is this a perfect plan? No, I may still be injured and unable to race when the scheduled date arrives but that doesn’t matter. Why? Because I have an entire lifetime to achieve this goal.
See Also: How Runners Can Easily Improve Their Foot Strength
The point of this story and article is to give you a new perspective of what you can and cannot do. Can you climb Mt. Everest? Some of you reading this will say no. BUT YOU CAN, you just don’t want to.
Can you do 1,000 pushups in under an hour? Right now, maybe not. But, eventually, could you? YES! You just have to want to.
You must understand what you are giving up (time, sweat, pain) and the worth of that to you. This is mental toughness. This is the power of the mind. Your body can do just about anything, you just need your mind to guide it.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. If you want to be successful, then you must endure through the hard things. But more than that, you have to understand things in a simpler way.
One plus one is two. Pain plus sweat can give you a healthy body. Hard work plus schooling can give you a successful business. Walking one step millions of times can get you across the country. Swimming one stroke over and over can take you across the ocean.
Think about these things. If you want to be successful, remove yourself from your body and win with your mind. This is mental toughness. This is mind power.
See Also: 5 Ways To Use The Mind Muscle Connection For Better Workouts
The post Mental Toughness: The Secret To Success appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
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Dreaming of starting an SEO company?
When you decide to start a business of your own, you are more likely to hear different advice for your startup. Most of the advice you’ll hear will come from those who don’t even know how to run a small business.
When you visit the internet, you’ll see an overwhelming load of articles and list of topics that won’t sound too familiar to you. Don’t fall into the trap of overthinking every single detail and confusing yourself.
To help you start strong in starting an SEO company, here are some of the best tips you need to learn:
No matter how tight the competition is, you have to fight like a mad man and be crazy in getting your website on Google’s 1st page in the search results. You have to hit the related keywords for SEO service in your local area.
You may think it’s impossible to rank on a page when the competition is too tight. Don’t let that stop you.
You need to focus on using the keywords that can get you to the first page of Google’s search results. Take note that you should be aiming for the top spot with a reason. Giving valuable content to your readers is one good way to boost your rankings.
Referrals are one of the most valuable customers you’ll ever have. Although they don’t even know who you are and what on earth you are doing, your chances of closing the deal with them are still incredibly high.
However, when you treat them poorly, they will not only stop paying you and getting your services, you will also notice a significant decrease in your referrals.
With this in mind, you have to maintain a clean image and reputation. You have to continue taking care of your clients even when you think it doesn’t make sense. If you do this, you will eventually get more clients from word-of-the-mouth referrals.
Most of those who started a few years ago had surely fallen into the mistake of relying on word-of-the-mouth referrals as their primary profit source. Today, there is a more reliable way on how to earn new customers: blogging.
If you want to increase your chance of getting noticed, start blogging about SEO, content marketing, social media marketing and digital marketing. The more you use technical words in your blog posts, the more frequently you’ll be able to use your own data to prove what you wrote. This will get you more leads.
See Also: 8 Common Content Marketing Myths You Should Stop Believing
According to Neil Patel, a well-known expert in SEO management, those posts with graphs and stats drive leads as much 3 times than those without stats and data.
When you’re in the SEO industry, reach out to everyone who needs your help. You may not see its benefits yet, but, eventually, this will help you in growing your network and in making it to the SEO industry.
People will start praising you and say good things about you. This isn’t just beneficial for you, but your business, too.
See Also: The Future of SEO – Predictions and Premonitions That Will Dominate 2017
By using all the tips mentioned above, starting your SEO company will not be as bad as those who started it without an outlined guide and tips. Keep in mind that you have to make sure that your company fulfills whatever promise you made to your clients.
You have to ensure that you deliver results. Aside from that, maintain a personal yet professional relationship with your customers as they love to feel valued.
The post Everything You Need To Know About Starting An SEO Company appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
On Friday, April 7, Judge Andre Davis of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit resorted to a poem by the Palestinian-American writer Naomi Shihab Nye, in an extraordinary opinion praising a young man who fought for his rights—and lost. Judge Davis’s opinion attests to the courage of Gavin Grimm for standing up for his rights, even as the court denied his request for vindication of those rights.
Sig Nordal 